Beaconsfield Chronic Epoch

Edited by Margaret Garlake Contents

7 Editor’s Introduction 58 between the devil and the deep (blue) sea 108 We’re spending 4 weeks at Beaconsfield, so let’s hope Mount/Leonardo Ulian/Nicolas Bourriaud, 8 Nosepaint Remembered BAW, STUART BRISLEY, ROBERT ELLIS, TRACEY everything goes ok Kim Noble, Jessica Voorsanger JULIAN STALLABRASS EMIN, BRUCE GILCHRIST, HAYLEY NEWMAN, (nobleandsilver) 151 Salah Days 12 Chronic Epoch Chronology MARK WALLINGER 111 Engineer BAW 16 Beaconsfield’s Progress, 1994–2014 62 Tomoko Takahashi GEORGINA BATTY, SUSAN COLLIS, Laura Ford, 152 Testbed I MARGARET GARLAKE Tomoko Takahashi CARINA DIEPENS, KERRY STUART, KATIE BARLOw ANTHONY GROSS, MICHAEL CURRAN AND 31 ‘The Lisson Gallery’ 64 Instantaneous 116 Moral Plinth LUCY GUNNING, PIL AND GALIA KOLLECTIV, LILLI MATTHEW ARNATT, DAVID CRAWFORTH, DAVID MOLLIN MATTHEW CALEY, MICHELLE GRIFFITHS, STEPHEN 119 Lightsilver HARTMANN, JOSEPH WALSH, DAFNA TALMOR 32 A Public Work of Art NICHOLAS, TAL SHOSHAN, CLAIRE SHILLITOE, PETER COLLIS, CHRIS CORNISH, MARK DEAN, 154 Gaming In Waziristan BAW SOL SNELTVEDT MATTIAS HÄRENSTAM, SUSAN PUI SAN LOK, NOOR BEHRAM, BUTLER BROTHERS, 35 Plein Air 66 Glean CHIARA PIRITO, ZINEB SEDIRA, JOÃO SEGURO, NOOSHIN FAHRID MATTHIAS JACKISCH, FÉLIX ZIEM ROBERT BEARD, ANNA BEST, KEITH COVENTRY, SEMICONDUCTOR 155 Am I making up what really happened? 36 Cottage Industry TAMSIN PENDER 120 Economy 1, 2, 3 SVEIN FLYGARI JOHANSEN SONIA BOYCE, KATE BUSH, MIKEY CUDDIHY, 68 Visonhire CARL MICHAEL VON HAUSSWOLFf 158 Soundtrap V SIOBHAN DAVIES, ELSIE MITCHELL, CLAIRE PALMiER, ANNA BEST 122 Chronic Epoch BRUCE GILBERT AND BAW NAOMI SIDERFIN 72 Estate EIJA-LIISA AHTILA, BAW, ANNA BEST, SUSAN COLLIS, KEITH 160 The Struggle 40 Gargantua IAN HINCHLIFFE COVENTRY, MIKEY CUDDIHY, SHANE CULLEN, ROBERT RACHEL GARFIELD ULI AIGNER, KEITH ARNATT, BAW, DEBBIE BOOTH, 75 Classic ELLIS, BRUCE GILBERT, CARL MICHAEL VON HAUSSWOLFF 161 Fall WAYNE LLOYD AND LAURENCE HARVEY, ROBERT [ROUT], PETE SMITH, O(RPHAN) D(RIFT>), DIANE AND THOMAS NORDANSTAD, JOHN ISAACS, HAYLEY Minna Haukka, Thomas Kvam, Angus FRASER MUNRO AND JEREMY BLANK, O(RPHAN) HARRIS WITH HEX NEWMAN, (nobleandsilver), BOB AND ROBERTA SMITH, Sanders-Dunnachie, Matthew Tickle D(RIFT>), POLSKADAVIANS, PUT PUT, PATRICIA 76 Butterfly KERRY STEWART, TOMOKO TAKAHASHI 162 Anniversary: an act of memory SCANLAN, TREBOR SCHOLTZ, STRIKE MIKEY CUDDIHY 128 Greenwich Degree Zero MONICA ROSS 41 Robert Ellis 80 R.A.F. in Berlin ROD DICKINSON, TOM MCCARTHY 164 Monoculture Robert Ellis Naomi Siderfin 130 Golden (Lessons) TAMSYN CHALLENGER 42 Disorders 82 Syzygy SUSAN PUI SAN LOK 166 Asymmetrical Cinema KIRSTY ALEXANDER AND PAUL BURWELL, BAW, O(RPHAN) D(RIFT>) VS CCRU 132 Hibernator MATERIAL CONJECTURES ANNE BEAN, JOHN CARSON, SARAH COLE, DAVID 86 Field I–VI LONDON FIELDWORKS 167 Phase IV CUNNINGHAM, BRUCE GILCHRIST WITH NICK ROGERS, DAVID CRAWFORTH, FRANKO B, BEN COCKETT 134 Soundtrap I and II JUDITH DEAN MATTHIAS JACKISCH, MICHAL KLEGA, RONA LEE, AND NAOMI SIDERFIN, MARY ANN FRANCIS, DANIEL FIGGIS, LEAFCUTTER JOHN 168 The Unfun Fair / The Unfun Fair Too ALASTAIR MACLENNAN, GUILLAUME PARIS, SONJA ZELIC [ROUT], PRANG AND ANNA BEST, FABIENNE 135 Forest Volume IV SIMON TYSZKO 44 Rax ADÉOUD AND JOHN RUSSELL. 136 Soundtrap III 170 Arkhipelagos (Navigating the tides of time) EIJA-LIISA AHTILA, ANDY BEST AND MERJA 88 Earthshaker AURA SATZ IC-98 PUUSTINEN, PIA LINDMAN, PEKKA NISKANEN, BAW 140 Soundtrap IV 171 We Are History ROI VAARA 90 The Nosepaint-Beaconsfield Papertrail 1991–2000 JOHN WYNNE John Timberlake 47 Rude Mechanic 92 Fragmens sur les Institutions Républicaines IV 141 Courage to Refuse 172 ART & COMPROMISE I: GUSTAV METZGER PAN SONIC, DAVID CRAWFORTH AND HAYLEY SHANE CULLEN CULTURE AND CONFLICT group 174 ART & COMPROMISE II: PAUL HOBSON NEWMAN WITH GUESTS 94 Element 142 The Way Out 175 ART & COMPROMISE III: MARK SEALY 55 Thatched BAW 15mm FILMS 176 ART & COMPROMISE V: JON THOMSON BAW 99 Shozo Shimamoto 144 Let’s Do Something or “We Must Do Something” 178 ART & COMPROMISE VI: MARK DEAN 56 Ground Control Shozo Shimamoto BOB AND ROBERTA SMITH 180 Raft FIONA BANNER, AIDA CEPONYTE AND VALDAS 100 The Agreement 150 Terminal Late at Tate DAVID CRAWFORTH OZARINSKAS, LUCY GUNNING, EVALDAS JANSAS, SHANE CULLEN Katherine Arianello and Naomi Siderfin, LINaS LIANDZBERGIS, DAVID MOLLIN, DIEMANTAS 104 Voices from the Id Dave Ball, BAW, Annie Davey, Minna Haukka, 190 Beaconsfield Chronic Epoch Photo Credits NARKEVICIUS, ARTURAS RAILA WITH DARIUS JOHN ISAACS Susannah Hewlett, Howard Jacques, Hayley CIUTA, ROBIN RIMBAUD AKA SCANNER, JON 106 Archangel of Seven Seas Newman and David Crawforth, Liz Murray, THOMSON AND ALISON CRAIGHEAD MARKUS COPPER Bob and Roberta Smith/Andrew Poppy/Victor Contact sheet, renovation of the former Lambeth Ragged School, 22 Newport Street, Vauxhall, London, SE11, July 1995

4 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH PAGE TITLE 5 Editor's Introduction

Naomi Siderfin and David Crawforth outside This book is the record of how two artists developed a practice of curatorship 22 Newport Street, London, SE11, 2005 that encompassed performance, sound, writing and making.

Chronic Epoch marked Beaconsfield’s first decade. Given the centrality of that event, we have appropriated its title for this book.

Beaconsfield emerged in financially hard times that were nevertheless extremely creative. It seems timely to offer this book not solely as an exemplar of survival, but as a model for running an artists’ space that has differed from its fellows in important respects. The building—historic and idiosyncratic— defines the core of Beaconsfield’s practice; it has been central to establishing both an image of the organisation and a manner of working that has raised curatorship to the status of an art form. Beaconsfield stands somewhat apart from art circuits, a result of the directors’ refusal to be classified. This has enabled them to grasp the full resources of London and to exploit its licence to take liberties, the most valuable aspect of their practice being the priority that it gives to hard-hitting, politically-grounded work. This is Beaconsfield’s identity, its singularity and the model that it offers to the future.

David Crawforth and Naomi Siderfin would like to express their gratitude for the crucial part that Angus Neill played in the formation of Beaconsfield. They would like to thank all the trustees of Beaconsfield past and present, staff and volunteers, the many artists they have worked with over the years and the kind funders of this publication, the Paul and Louise Cooke Endowment and the Henry Moore Foundation. I join them in gratefully acknowledging all who have contributed to this book, not least Duncan McCorquodale, Amy Cooper-Wright, João Mota and the Black Dog Publishing team.

6 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Editor's Introduction 7 Nosepaint Remembered

In a club thronged with quite young, quite drunk folk, a group of men on a low stage thrash beer barrels with chains, and then throw the barrels around the room. In another club, the male and female toilets are linked by CCTV, which leads to some entertaining misbehaviour. In a gutted warehouse building at midnight on New Year’s Eve, a similar crowd get warm—but not too close—to fiercely burning filing cabinets, drawers open, flames springing from the paper. Passersby look on curiously at a middle-aged man who calmly carries a large leafy branch through the streets of central London; outside the British Museum, he poses like a tourist for pictures.

Before Beaconsfield, with its base in Vauxhall’s old Ragged School building, hard on the elevated railway, there was the curiously named Nosepaint, a peripatetic organisation also run by David Crawforth and Naomi Siderfin. They put together art events in streets, parks and clubs, starting with hybrid art-club nights in a cafe, a community centre, then Hayley Newman, Nosepaint, Arch 66, Goding sufficed. Gilchrist’s intervention predated the term, but would now a railway arch not far from the Ragged School. The name, incidentally, Street, Vauxhall, London, SE11, 29 April, 1994 be counted as a dark foray into ‘relational aesthetics’, and many remained obscure to many who came to those events but is old slang Nosepaint events could be seen as experiments in activating awareness of Paul Burwell (drums and pyrotechnics)/ for alcohol strong enough to colour the nose. Joyce used it in Ulysses of a conventional social interactions, and how they could be stretched to the Loophole Cinema, Night of the Fire Cabinets, character “unwashed of course and in a seedy getup and a strong suspicion point of rupture. Nosepaint at The Tannery, Bermondsey, of nosepaint about the nasal appendage”. London, SE1, New Year’s Eve, 1993 Relational aesthetics, though, was far from the mainstream concerns The club events had an edge of wildness to them. They drew in lots of of the London art world in the early 1990s, which was caught up with people who would not normally go to an art event, and their attraction emerging ‘young British art’. While YBA had its centre in Hoxton, an was that no one knew what to expect. They mixed live music, sound art, old working-class, industrial area of east London, in which hungry-eyed performance, cabaret and even circus elements, along with installation developers were looking for investment opportunities, and saw artists and multi-media displays. Hayley Newman miked-up the inside of her and galleries as the useful vanguard of gentrification, Vauxhall was mouth, and engaged in a ten-minute-long, very public and very loud quite different. Though central and well-connected, it had been heavily snog. When Ian Hinchliffe performed (and his nose was permanently bombed in the Second World War, and the extensive ruins had been built though productively painted), the audience was provoked into reaction, over with massive, system-built council estates. Like many industrial usually drunken heckling, which would bring out the artist’s rambling areas, it had been deliberately driven into poverty under the Thatcher but deep-cutting responses; his performances were eccentric to the regime; its factories and warehouses shut down, its people turned out point of danger, and occasionally involved the shedding of blood. of work, its services run down, its shops closed for lack of local income. In a Nottingham night club, Bruce Gilchrist and a collaborator had It was not quite as dire as some London areas further east—at least in themselves wired up to an electrical circuit. When they touched, and Vauxhall the pubs remained open—but its population and infrastructure when someone in the club pressed a button, they would receive a painful at that time were recalcitrant blocks to gentrification. shock. Sadism was set against curiosity and entertainment, since here (in contrast to the infamous Milgram experiments) there was no figure of In both Hoxton and Vauxhall, a young, alienated cultural crowd mixed with authority ordering people to administer the shock and absolving them those stranded by the draining away of industry and the disempowerment of responsibility; instead alcohol and an air of collective exhilaration of organised labour; but the difference was that in the former, real-estate

8 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Nosepaint Remembered 9 entrepreneurs, new media and creative industry types were also thrown Nosepaint is not well known as part of the 1990s British art scene, except into that mix, and the heady perfume of money-making was in the air. In among the people who attended its events.2 Scant, inadequate documents Vauxhall, the interactions were more desperate and sometimes violent, and memories are held against the condescension of the present. The and the place offered a truer picture of vast swathes of the degraded nation, culture of the rich is trumpeted loudly, and taken as the authentic spirit of saddled forever (it seemed then) by an insouciantly callous and culturally that time: the marketable, media-friendly, attention-seeking products of backward Conservative autocracy. YBA, issued to a grateful conservative media, buoying up the reputations of celebrity artists, collectors and dealers. London, too, changed rapidly That government, it should be remembered, had launched a series of once the Labour government embraced a mild modernity, and continued legal assaults on youth’s chosen expressions of enjoyment. The Criminal to draw in the global mega-rich and favour financial capital to such an Justice and Public Order Act of 1994 targeted raves and infamously extent that many ordinary people (artists included) were priced out of the playing of loud music “wholly or predominantly characterised by the city altogether. Even Vauxhall eventually began to yield to the tide of the emission of a succession of repetitive beats”, and contained other gaudy luxury flats. provisions which threatened much organised dissent.1 This lent further edge to Nosepaint’s club and street events, which had no official sanction, Its forgetting is no accident, then, since Nosepaint was never much about and which often operated in areas where the Hobbesian bargain with the selling stuff (except beer). It worked on artists and audiences alike, state—of protection from arbitrary violence—operated patchily at best. hybridising media and the character of events themselves, reflecting on and changing participation, the divide between artist and viewer, I experienced these events partly as an ordinary viewer but also as a performer and spectator, and on ideas about what gets called ‘art’ and Simon Whitehead, Birnam—on common photographer and writer, commissioned by Nosepaint. Photography was what does not. In that sense, it had the air of an avant-garde, though its land, enclosures and fortresses, performance not, perhaps, very important to the events themselves (although there integral and collective consciousness at its social, economic and political view, Kingsway, London, W2, 6 November were a few occasions when I remember lenses apparently outnumbering setting gave it little faith in the judgement of the future. Its effects were 1993, peripatetic performance event travelling viewers) but it takes on a necessarily unwarranted significance in felt less on objects than in minds. Yet as the increasingly predominant between King’s Cross Station and the retrospect, so it is worth saying something about how some of the early culture of the super-rich carries contemporary art into realms utterly Southbank Centre, curated by Nosepaint pictures in this book were made. remote to the experience of the vast majority of people, there remains value in that. Lighting at the club events tended to be dim and of mixed sources, each with their own tint. To have used flash would have been very disruptive Julian Stallabrass to the performers and audience alike. Modern digital cameras would handle such conditions easily, but in the early 1990s we had to use film— usually one balanced for tungsten light, and kept in the developer for longer to give it a bit of extra speed. So fast film, fast lenses that drew in what light there was and gave very little depth of focus, and hoping rather than knowing that something sharp and reasonably well-exposed would end up traced on the emulsion. Naturally, all movement—except that implied by frozen action—all noise and much of the sense of interaction were stripped out in these photographs. Those of us taking pictures soon 2 There is little literature on Nosepaint. learned that there were two kinds of performers: artists who would Beaconsfield published a limited edition act as if they were entirely in their own world and those who engaged book of documents and photographs, with an audience. Also that there were two similar attitudes towards Nosepaint-Beaconsfield 1991–2000, London: photographers: those who carried on regardless, and those who seemed Beaconsfield, 2001; and in a book about to carry the idea of the photo-op in their heads, who would pause at key alternatives to ‘Young British Art’, I wrote moments and before dramatic backdrops so that we could get our shots. an essay about a Nosepaint event, “A Place The two sets of attitudes did not necessarily align. It could be argued of Pleasure: Woodwork, Vauxhall Spring that those who took no account of the lens conducted a purer form of Gardens and Making Audiences for Art” in 1 The bill as originally enacted may be performance, thrown into the moment and the minds of those present, McCorquodale, Duncan, Naomi Siderfin and read here: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ while those who always had in mind how they would look in pictures had Julian Stallabrass, eds, Occupational Hazard: ukpga/1994/33/contents/enacted a cannier eye on the future. Critical Writing on Recent British Art, London: Black Dog Publishing, 1998.

10 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Nosepaint Remembered 11 Chronology 1994–2014 1999 curated by Suman Gopinath and Grant 2003 All exhibitions and events collaboratively curated by David Crawforth and Naomi Siderfin with Angus Neill Rise and Fall/Randy as Fuck/ Watson and co-produced with inIVA The Agreement, Shane Cullen, until 1997 and thereafter Crawforth/Siderfin to date, on the premises at 22 Newport Street, London Random Automatic Fire (R.A.F.), in association with Victoria & Albert Orchard Gallery, Derry, 8/1–15/2; SE11 unless otherwise specified. This chronology does not include the public talks and events programme BAW curated by Hayley Newman for Museum, 7/10–29/11 Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast, running within each exhibition. Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof FATE a Christmas Fair, various artists 22/2–23/3; Beaconsfield, London, für Gegenwart, Berlin, 16–17/01 December 10/4–8/6 1994 1996 1997 Rude Mechanic CD produced by Engineer Part One, Georgina Batty, ‘The Lisson Gallery’ produced by Maps Elsewhere Jo Stockham and Classic, [rout] inaugural concert with Piano, launch 29/1 2001 19/6–30/5/04 Nosepaint/Beaconsfield;M atthew Deborah Levy with BAW, Chris Ofili, Pete Smith, O(rphan) d(rift>), Dianne Clouding the Issue, BAW, in Earthshaker, BAW curated by CGP Engineer Part Two, Susan Collis, Arnatt, David Crawforth, David Alistair Raphael, Jo Stockham, Anne Harris with Hex, 22/2 Passion, Gasworks SE11, March at Clare College Mission Church, 10/7–30/5/04 Mollin, installation, 2, Topham Street Tallentire, 22/3–28/4, curated Ground Control: artists’ SYZYGY, O(rphan) d(rift>) and SE1, January Society (film), selected by Georgina EC1, 20/3–2/4 by inIVA despatches from Lithuania and CCRU with Pat Cardigan, John The Nosepaint-Beaconsfield Batty and Susan Collis, 28/11 Beaconsfield at Ministry of Gargantua, Uli Aigner, Keith Arnatt, Britain with Fiona Banner, Ceponyte Cussans, Kodwo Eshun, Nick Land, Papertrail 1991–2000 and Society (music), Paul Newland and Sound presents Nosepaint with BAW, Debbie Booth, Wayne Lloyd and Ozarinscas, Lucy Gunning, Evaldas 26/2–28/3 Beaconsfield archive vitrine in Audrey Riley Bluff, David Crawforth, Robert Ellis, and Laurence Harvey, Ronald Fraser Jansas, Linas Liandzbergis, David Silent Movie, Chris Marker, co- London 1990–2001, Century City: DJ Fuckwit, Bruce Gilchrist, David Munro and Jeremy Blank, O(rphan) Mollin, Deimantas Narkevicius, Aturas produced Pier Trust, 12/5–13/6 Art and Culture in the Modern 2004 Gilchrist, Sue Hart, Ian Hinchliffe, d(rift>), Polskadavians, PUT PUT, Raila with Darius Ciuta, Scanner, British Links, Gisle Frøysland, Bruce Metropolis, Tate Modern, 1/2–29/4 Engineer Part Three: Wreckers, Lindsay John, Niki Jewett, Loophole Patricia Scanlan, Trebor Scholtz, Julian Jon Thomson & Alison Craighead, Gilchrist, Michelle Griffiths,M attias Fragmens sur les Institutions Laura Ford , 22/1–30/5 Cinema, Karen Malarky, Angus Neill, Stallabrass, Strike, Verso, 12 hour exchange in collaboration with Harenstam, Geir Tore Holm, 4 x Kanari, Républicaines IV, Shane Cullen, Engineer Part 4: Pipedream, Andrew Wilkey, Seven Sisters Group, book launch, 6/6 Jutempus, Vilnius, CAC Vilnius, Mute, Rona Lee, Tor Magnus Lundeby, Hayley courtesy IMMA, 13/3–22/4 Butterfingers, Clothhead,Carina Naomi Siderfin, Dr Rapakini with Eli, Keg, BAW, Camberwell Green SE5, Baltic Flour Mills, Artists Newsletter Newman, Bob and Roberta Smith, in Oh Loverboy, Franko B, co- Diepens, 26/2–30/5; Eastern Sound System, Hugh Harris, June, curated by Conductors Hallway and Sunderland University, curated by association with f.u.s.k. Henie-Onstad produced with Arts Admin 28/4 Engineer Part 5: Blackbird Mull of Judge Jules, LMC, Graham Massey, Robert Ellis, solo, 21/6–14/7 Beaconsfield and Jutempus, 29/5–22/6 Art Centre and National Museum of Afterlife, Heather Ackroyd, Dan Kintyre, Kerry Stewart, 25/3–30/5; Skip McDonald, Billy Nasty, Pure Disorders, Kirsty Alexander and Keith Coventry, WAFS, film, 1/7 Contemporary Art, Oslo, April and Harvey, co-produced with Arts Engineer Part 6: Visit Palestine, Silver, Talvin Singh, Doug Wimbish, Paul Burwell, BAW, Anne Bean, between the devil and the deep June, curated by Offsite and Beaconsfield Admin, 5/5–10/6 Katie Barlow, 22/4–30/5 Hariharan Zuveya,103, Gaunt Street, John Carson, Sarah Cole, David (blue) sea, BAW, Stuart Brisley, Field 1: Little Dancer, David CLUB CLUB CLUB curated by The Agreement, Shane Cullen, SE1, 20/10 Cunningham, Bruce Gilchrist and Robert Ellis, Tracey Emin, Bruce Crawforth, 17/9–23/10 Wilken Schade, Eva Stenram and Millennium Arts Centre, Portadown, Nick Rogers, Matthias Jackisch, Michal Gilchrist, Hayley Newman, Mark New Contemporaries 99 Simon Wood, 30/6–22/7 7/5–19/6 1995 Klega, Rona Lee, Alastair Maclennan, Wallinger, co-produced with Muu ry co-hosted with Milch and South Earthshaker, BAW, curated by UKS Society (film), Route 181, A Public Work of Art, Beaconsfield Guillaume Paris, Sonja Zelic, 24 hour for Helsinki Festival, 14–31/8 London Art Gallery, 20/11–22/12 Biennial, Oslo, 1/9 Fragments of a Journey in ArtWorks (BAW), sound sculpture, live art and installation, St Thomas’s Tomoko Takahashi, with Neill Element, BAW, commissioned Palestine-Israel, Eyal Sivan and Queens Walk, South Bank Centre, Hospital, SE1, 15–16/8, curated Quinton, 14/11–14/12 2000 by UKS Biennial and Alta Museum, Michel Kleif, 15/5 SE1, 1/2–1/3 by Nosepaint and produced by Field II: I Miss You, Franko B, Finmark, Norway, 8/9–1/10 Society (music), Reem Kelani and Accompanying Dialogues, BAW Beaconsfield 1998 bleeding performance, 14/4 Earthshaker, BAW, curated by band, 28/5 with Nicholas Logsdail, Greg Hilty and RAX, Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Andy Best and Instantaneous, Mark Dean, Field 11I: Modern, Ben Cockett, Tracey Warr for OX1, Oxford Society (Pizzeria Gestione Ministry of Sound, Artifice CD-ROM Merja Puustinen, Pia Lindman, Pekka Michelle Griffiths, Stephen Nicholas Naomi Siderfin, 19/5–11/6 Brookes University, 25/10 Familiare), Andrea Crociani, Anna article, July Niskanen, Roi Vaara, firstU K exhibition and Matthew Caley, Clare Shilito, Tal Earthshaker, BAW, commissioned Shozo Shimamoto, curated with Best, 25/6 Beaconsfield launch, 22 Newport of contemporary Finnish art, 14/9– Shoshan, Sol Sneltvedt, 17/1–8/2, by Svein Flygari Johannsen for Tatsuko Tomiyama, 18/10–11/11 The Agreement, Shane Cullen, Street SE11, 13/9 13/10, curated by Andy Best and Merja curated by David Crawforth Stavanger Biennial, 15–18/6 Kilkenny Arts Festival, 6/8 Plein Air, Matthias Jackisch Puustinen, co-produced with MUU ry Jewel, BAW residency, teaching and Field IV: Group Show, Mary Anne 2002 Moral Plinth, a soapbox for free and Félix Ziem, live, process-led Soap Opera (feast), BAW with research, Dartington College of Arts, Francis, 23/6–9/7 Voices from the id, John Isaacs, speech, 16/1–21/11 exhibition,14/9–13/10 guests, DOG, London, September, April–June Field V: Bcnsfld, [rout], Anna Best, 4/4–12/5 Society (Japanese immigration PUNCH: contemporary dance, curated by Bank for Viper/Bank TV Glean, Anna Best, Robert Beard, Prang, 10–15/7 Archangel of Seven Seas (courtesy control), gu(:)n (Yu, SAM2, Yumi Seven Sisters Group, 21/10 Rude Mechanic, David Crawforth, Keith Coventry, Tamsin Pender, Field VI, Fabienne Audéoud and John Kiasma) and Rose Garten, Markus Hara aKa DJAnakonda, Tomomi PUNCH: contemporary music, Hayley Newman and Pan Sonic with 6–28/6, curated by Naomi Siderfin Russell, 1/9–24/10 Copper, 30/5–7/7 Adachi, Michiyoshi Isozaki, 26/11 Lost Parakeets (Gus Garside David Cunningham, Robert Ellis, Juggernaut putting Viagra into Realm of the senses, various The Agreement: a Beaconsfield and Lukax Santana), Viv Dogan Bruce Gilbert, David Gilchrist, Alison young hands... Arch launch event, international artists commissioned Commission to Commemorate 2005 Corringham and Mike Cooper, Michel Goldfrapp, Tiina Huczkowski, Kaffe 3/10 by Titanik and co-produced with the Signing of the Agreement Lightsilver, Mark Dean, Peter Collis, Ormiston, 28/10 Matthews, PUT PUT, Sanctuary Estate—the Ian Hinchliffe Beaconsfield, Turku, Finland 15/9– reached in the Multi-party Chiara Pirito, Chris Cornish, susan Cottage Industry, Sonja Boyce, Kate Ministries Music Team, Scanner, Susan Retrospective, 30/10–22/11 15/10, curated by David Crawforth, Negotiations of 1998, Shane Cullen, pui san lok, Mattias Härenstram, João Bush, Mikey Cuddihy, Siobhan Davies, Stenger, Jimi Tenor, Paul Thomas, Mikey Cuddihy—New Paintings, Saara Ekström and Arto Korhonen Project, Dublin, 26/9–27/10 Seguro, Zineb Sedira, Semiconductor, Elsie Mitchell, Claire Palmier, Naomi Simon Fisher Turner, 9/11–7/12 27/11–20/12 NS Harsha residency 8/9–15/10 We’re spending 4 weeks at moving image, 24/2–8/5 Siderfin, 4/11–3/12, curated by Naomi Thatched, BAW, commissioned by Drawing Space—Contemporary Beaconsfield, so let’s hope Society (Newport Calypso), Siderfin FAT as part of Roadworks, Tottenham Indian Drawing, Sheila Gowda, NS everything goes ok, Mark Dean, Michael Goddard, Derek Court Rd, W1, 8/10–9/11 Harsha, Nasreem Mohomedi, (nobleandsilver), 31/10–24/11 Goddard, 11/3 Carl Michael von Hausswolff, 2007 Soundtrap III: Glissolalia, Aura Satz, 2010 FlatScreen: Nineteen Thirty-Six, Class 4 Cathedral School, Southwark Economy 1,2,3, 2/6–31/7 Hibernator—Prince of the residency and exhibition, 27/6–20/7 Art & Compromise V: Jon Kate Allen, 31/5–15/7 Cathedral, 13/11 Society (with Cocktail), Charlie Petrified Forest, London Fieldworks Courage to Refuse, Culture and Thomson, 18/2 Flash in the Pan, Camberwell Touch 30, Atmospheres 4, curated Gillan, The Hands, (nobleandsilver), (Bruce Gilchrist and Jo Joelson), Conflict Group (Katie Barlow, John Testbed I, Anthony Gross (3–21/3), College of Arts MFA, mentored by Mike Harding and Jon Wozencroft, Sav, Wertus, 15/7 15/3–29/4 Buckley, David Crawforth, Shane Michael Curran and Lucy Gunning exhibition, 15–17/6 5–6/12 Chronic Epoch: 1995–2005 the Soundtrap II, Leafcutter John, Cullen), Emily Tsingou Gallery, (23/3–11/4), Pil and Galia Kollectiv Ian Hinchliffe—the Memorial, 2/7 celebration of a decade, Eija-Liisa residency and exhibition, 13/6–22/7 20/1–15/3 (13/4–9/5), Joseph Walsh (20/4– Gaming in Waziristan, Noor 2013 Ahtila, BAW, Anna Best, Susan Collis, Push the Envelope Further, Jeffe John’s House, Patricia Osses, 30/5), Lilli Hartmann (27/4–4/6), Behram, Butler Brothers, Nooshin Monoculture,Tamsyn Challenger, Keith Coventry, Mikey Cuddihy, Shane Jeffers, Lucy Newman Cleves, The 20/9–26/10 Dafna Talmor (22/6–18/7), curated Farhid, 19/7–1/9 exhibition and events, 20/2–13/4 Cullen, Robert Ellis, Bruce Gilbert, Hon Robert Loder CBE, Anna Vass, Terminal, Late at Tate, Katherine by Dafna Talmor and Joseph Walsh Character, Michael Curran, David FlatScreen: Begged Borrowed Carl Michael von Hausswolff and Danielle Arnaud, 25/7 Arianello and Naomi Siderfin, Dave mentored by Beaconsfield, 3/3–18/7 Crawforth, Dr Fiona Haughey, Howard and Stolen, intermittent Thomas Nordanstad, John Isaacs, Forest—Volume IV, BAW, Karl Ball, BAW, Annie Davey, Minna FlatScreen: The Badger Series, Jacques, Gordon Joly and Simon Pope, Asymmetrical Cinema, Material Hayley Newman, (nobleandsilver), Bob Burke, Mark Dean, Bruce Gilbert, Haukka, Susannah Hewlett, Howard Paul Tarrago, Spring/Summer 09 Edith Slee, Stefan Szchelkun, Naomi Conjectures with Amanda Beech and and Roberta Smith, Kerry Stewart, Leafcutter John, Fergus Kelly and David Jacques, Hayley Newman and David This Artist is Deeply Dangerous, Siderfin, Dafna Talmor, Caroline Todd, Alan Clarke,15/5–8/6 Tomako Takahashi, 14/9–20/11 Lacey, Pan Sonic, Bob and Roberta Crawforth, Liz Murray, Bob and Bob and Roberta Smith, The Big Shed, produced by Home as part of Embrace n.paradoxa Salon, forum for Mother of All Parties Dave Smith, DJ Tendraw, Nina Hynes, Roberta Smith/Andrew Poppy/ Iken, Suffolk, 6–27/6 the Place, Tate Local, 3/9 professional women artists, curators, Ball and guests, CMvH, David Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin, 6–16/9 Victor Mount/Leonardo Ulian/ Salah Days, BAW, as part of Soundtrap V: Diluvial (ii), Bruce writers, 16/5, 13/6, 18/7, 11/9, 16/10, Cunningham/Karen Mirza/Brad Puss & Mew London Dry Gin/ Nicolas Bourriaud, Kim Noble, Jessica Proposals for a Socialist Colony, Gilbert and BAW, 8/9–30/10 13/12, 11/12 Butler, Clippetyclop, Annie Davey, The Way Out, Luis Carvajal and Voorsanger, 5/12 Skydive, Houston, US, 17/3–19/6 FlatScreen: Conic Trilogy, Phase 4: Judith Dean, in residence, Judith Dean, Mark Dean, Dirty Snow, Annie Davey, 15mm Films, Open TestBed I, exhibition,18/9–17/10 Nooshin Farhid, 8/9–30/10 16/5–29/6 DJ Seed, Bruce Gilbert, Nick Green, House London, 15–16/9 2009 with discussion convened by Francis SpaceShip Earth’s Living Roof, This Bird has Flown, Bodil Furu, Howard Jacques, Peter Jones, Ken Flashes from the Archives of Phase 1: Factory Outlet/This Summers, 19/9 Dafna Talmor with Mark Pavey and 12/6–10/8 Ardley Playboys, Monkey Cloakroom, Oblivion, Stuart Brisley, Ian Hinchliffe Artist is Deeply Dangerous, Bob The Lowest Form of Music: Michael Shaw, Green Walk by Caroline The Unfair Fair, Simon Tyszko, Jo Robertson, Stash, Alexander (incorporating Estate), Alastair and Roberta Smith in residence and the Los Angeles, Free Music Todd, sustainable garden launch for 12–29/6; The Unfair Fair Too, Wendt, 19/11 Maclennan, Tatsumi Orimoto, Chapter exhibition, 22/2–21/2/10 Society’s London Weekend, in Open House London, 17–18/9 10/7–10/8 Arts Centre, Cardiff, 17/11–13/1/08, Art & Compromise 1II: Mark association with Harbinger Sound, Art & Compromise VII: Julian Diluvial, Bruce Gilbert and BAW, CD 2006 curated by Andre Stitt Sealy, 11/2 Second Layer Records, No-Fi and Stallabrass and Clive Stafford launch produced by Touch, 13/9 Greenwich Degree Zero, Rod MoAP, Fraternise dinner, December FlatScreen: Fallen Idyll, Monica Sound and Music, 22–24/10 Smith, 19/10 Soundtrap VI: Lori Anne Dickinson and Tom McCarthy, Ross, 17/3–17/5 FlatScreen: Travelling Fields, Inge Phase 3: Am I making up what Napoleon, Open House London, 22/2–30/4 2008 The Way Out, 15mm Films, in Lise Hansen, 26/10–23/11 really happened?, Svein Flygari 21–22/9 Society (necronautical), Tom Self-cancellation, Mark and John residence and exhibition, 25/3–15/6 Phase 2: The Beginning of the Johansen, 12/11–12/2 Phase 4, Judith Dean, exhibition and McCarthy, Stuart Home, Neil Bain, John Butcher, Michael Colligan, Art & Compromise 1V: 15mm End, Mark Dean, exhibition and events, 11/10–30/11 Gordon-Orr, Jem Finer, Melissa Rhodri Davies, Benedict Drew, Films in conversation with Monica events, 23/11–27/2/11 2012 Diluvial, Bruce Gilbert and BAW, McCarthy 7/4 Robin Hayward, Gustav Metzger, Ross, 6/5 A View from the Other Side, AGORA 4th Athens Biennale, Soundtrap 1: Doppler, Daniel Lee Patterson, Sarah Washington, FlatScreen: 3 films, Alex Kershaw, 2011 IC–98, 1/3–14/4 29/9–1/12 Figgis, 21–25/6 commissioned by Arika & the London 9/6–9/8 Art & Compromise VI: Mark The Struggle, Rachel Garfield, Mother of all Parties (summer Musicians Collective and co-produced Soundtrap IV, John Wynne, Dean, with Tony Carter, David Mollin with Here There Then Now, 2014 solstice) Spring Heel Jack, Daniel with Beaconsfield, 2–9/2 residency, exhibition, event, and Naomi Siderfin, 3/2 Stephen Dwoskin and Rachel Garfield, Dissolved, Station House Opera, Figgis, The Fallen Leaves, Susannah Art & Compromise 1: Gustav 10/9–18/10 FlatScreen, Björn, Elin Bruun- 19/4–3/6 live telematic link with Berlin, 6–22/4 Hewlett, Fairlights, DJ Tendraw and The Metzger, 6/2 Anniversary—an act of memory: Nystedt, Evelina Gustavsson, Sara TestBed II: Monoculture, Tamsyn including n.paradoxa and Ff group Gypsies Dog, Dr Valentine, Suzywan, MoAP (some do ‘ave ‘em), Act 13, Monica Ross with 58 artist Lundber, Eval Olsson, Perborg, Challenger, residency and exhibition, Feminist salon, 15/3; Enemies of Good Sandar Kolar, Howard Jacques, Melanie Clifford, Annie Davey, Paul participants, Open House London, 19/9 Mattias Härenstam, Nina Lassila, 28/6–2/13 Art Open Public Meeting, London- Northern Roses, Annie Davey, 24/6 B Davis, Hauschka, Howard Jacques, The Way Out, 15mm Films, Lou Dana Sederowsky, Jonas Nilsson, Antii Poetics of the Motorway, Will Berlin, 21/3 Push the Envelope, Tony Carter, Lundahl and Seitl, Liz Murray, Andrew Birks, Stephen Dwoskin, Andrew Savela, 1/3–1/4, curated by art:screen, Alsop, Edward Chell, Jennifer Cooke, Arkhipelagos (Navigating The Richard Grayson, Anna Harding, Jeffe Parker, Serafina Steer, Tetine, Jessica Kötting, Sandra Lahire, Justin Sweden David Lawrence, 27/7 Tides Of Time), IC–98, 4/4–7/6 Jeffers, Peter St John, Sheena Wagstaff, Voorsanger, Weirdcore, in association Edgar (screening) and Maxa Zoller FlatScreen: My Mum(v2– Atelier: artists at work on site, We Are History, John Timberlake, a symposium chaired by Naomi with Lumin, 8/3 (discussion), in collaboration with Sensitive), Mark Dean, 9–25/3 Tamsyn Challenger, David Crawforth, 28/6–30/8 Siderfin, 19/7 Art & Compromise 1I: Paul Curzon Soho, 8/11 Fraternise—the Salon, a Judith Dean, Rachel Garfield, Bruce Courage to Refuse, Katie Barlow, Hobson, 28/5 Factory Outlet, Bob and Roberta fundraising exhibition and events with Gilbert, Naomi Siderfin, Caroline John Buckley, David Crawforth, Shane MoAP (3 Faces of Matmos), Drew Smith, exhibition and events, 6/11– 80 artists, curated by Rachel Howard, Wright, Open House London, Cullen (Culture and Conflict Group), Daniel, Nitewreckers, People Like 21/2/10 Judith Dean, David Crawforth, Naomi 22–23/7 8/6–4/8 Us, Le Couteau Jaune, DJ Tendraw, Siderfin, 2/4–29/5 Fall, Matthew Tickle, Angus Sanders- Roerloos, Carina Diepens, Open Howard Jacques, Mark Dean, Jay Soundtrap V: Diluvial (i), Bruce Dunachie, Thomas Kvam, Minna House London, 16–17/10 Lesser, Kaffe Matthews, Stephen Gosh, Gilbert and BAW, The Big Shed, Haukka, 27/10–1/12 Golden (Lessons) susan pui san lok, Stephen Thrower, Carter Tutti, in Aldeburgh Festival’s Faster than Anniversary—an act of memory, 18/10–10/11 association with Lumin, 7–9/6 Sound, Suffolk, 27–29/5 Act 47, Monica Ross and children of Beaconsfield’s Progress, work as integral to their own art practices. Yet despite the plurality that characterises today’s art world, their position remains controversial. 1994–2014 ‘The Lisson Gallery’ was a funny, bewildering undertaking which involved 26 guinea pigs which fed from plates vibrating on speakers set in the floor, installed by Crawforth. They roamed the ground floor of a derelict pub otherwise occupied by David Mollin’s drawings and Matthew Arnatt’s advertisement proofs. It addressed the important “Beaconsfield is a concept, not a place.”1 question of the status of Beaconsfield/Nosepaint relative to conventional contemporary galleries, emphasising that “Nosepaint has traditionally Beaconsfield’s origins lie in Nosepaint, an occasional arts club founded in enjoyed accommodating artists whose work, by its nature, might not be 1991 by David Crawforth and Naomi Siderfin, painters who had met at shown elsewhere.”4 the Royal Academy Schools. Working in Vauxhall, they produced over 30 live events involving more than 300 artists.2 Participants included visual Having decided, with Angus Neill, to establish a venue-based organisation and performance artists, writers and musicians who met at monthly and to seek funding for a programme of activities, Beaconsfield was events where there would be a bar, food, a gig. Fortuitously, Nosepaint granted charitable status in November 1994. The founders became resembled the ICA of the early 1950s which was simultaneously an directors employed by the charity and appointed three trustees. The first artists’ home-from-home and the centre of contemporary creativity in Chair was Colin Whittington, chief executive of Leader Industries, whose London. The connection was underlined when in June 1993, Crawforth business-oriented approach and knowledge greatly assisted the initial set- and Siderfin presented Nosepaint in the ICA’s Ripple Effect, a monthly up. He resigned in March 1997. Neill became a non-executive director series devoted to new performers and new work. Nosepaint, like the following month and resigned a year later, having filled the crucial Beaconsfield, had a strong political identity, focusing on collaborative roles of financial director, treasurer and latterly, trustee. Crawforth and and interdisciplinary practice. By September 1993, after three years Siderfin returned to their former creative partnership, as the organisation’s of successful, if hand-to-mouth music, performance and bar sessions, artistic directors. Siderfin also acted as the principal administrator, a role Crawforth and Siderfin were considering setting up a permanent space. in which she had become adept, while Crawforth undertook the in-depth investigation of new technology necessary to support the technical aspects of their curatorial projects. Since 1993 the organisation had received a Concept—identity grant from the London Arts Board (LAB), later to merge with the Arts Council of England (ACE). LAB’s long-term support and advisory role, Asked to describe Beaconsfield, people are usually flummoxed: it is initially delivered by Bronac Ferran and Paula Brown, were indispensable, too complex, contradictory, conceptual. Firstly, what should we make underlining the continuity of purpose and achievement. of the name? It indicates a beacon offering challenging, high quality art 1 Naomi Siderfin and David Crawforth, letter in the vast field of contemporary media, also a rather stuffy place in Early in 1995 a bronze disc, elaborately embossed with the Prince of to the London Arts Board, 30 September, 1999. Buckinghamshire commuter land, with historical resonance and replete Wales’ feathers, appeared on Queen’s Walk outside the Royal Festival 2 See Siderfin, Naomi and David Crawforth with Victorian gravitas. The enigmatic name signals an organisation Hall. This was A Public Work of Art, by Beaconsfield Artworks (BAW), eds, The Nosepaint-Beaconsfield Papertrail 1991– where everything is open to question, reversal, reformulation, in aka Crawforth, Neill and Siderfin, in an occasional manifestation 2000, London: Beaconsfield, 2001 and Wilson, that Beaconsfield’s central remit is enquiry into contemporary art, its of their collaborative art practice.5 It announced the Beaconsfield Andrew ed, City Racing: the Life and Times of an presentation and reception. What is a work of art? Is a curatorial practice curatorial project, offering a programme that would “debate the Artist-run Gallery 1988–1998, London: Black itself an art practice? Where do the two merge? These are the primary production and consumption of contemporary art”.6 The object, and Dog Publishing, 2002, p 21. questions that underpin curatorial policy in Newport Street. its public presentation on a chilly autumn evening, articulated the 3 Siderfin and Crawforth,Nosepaint- elusive nature of an organisation grounded in an evolutionary practice Beaconsfield, p 21. In March 1994 ‘The Lisson Gallery’—an event rather than a location— where ideas and process take priority over the making and selling of 4 Siderfin and Crawforth,Nosepaint- opened as a Nosepaint-Beaconsfield co-production, announcing objects. While stimulating reflection on permanence, monumentality Beaconsfield, p 21. Beaconsfield as “a new organisation that is interested in involving itself and public art, this enigmatic object emitted gurgling sounds like a 5 See Swenson, Ingrid, “Beaconsfield”,Artifice , in the process of artistic production”.3 The announcement was the key constricted flow of water, in fact a recording of the lungs of a patient with 2, 1995, pp 94–101. to Beaconsfield’s subsequent undertakings, in which Crawforth and terminal pneumonia. Groups gathered to listen, indicate mystification 6 See Swenson, Ingrid, “Beaconsfield”,Artifice , Siderfin have not only applied the insights and understanding of fellow and pass on. 2, 1995, p 97. practitioners to their curatorial work but have consistently regarded that

16 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Beaconsfield’s Progress, 1994–2014 17 The near-identical aims and objectives of Beaconsfield and Nosepaint maintenance and, not least a programme, demanded a change of approach emphasise innovation and quality, a range of disciplines and social of a magnitude that no-one had envisaged and to which there were no and cultural integration. Nosepaint lingered on fruitfully, producing easy solutions. occasional events and is still evident in a common graphic style that combines enigmatic imagery with legible factual information. The nineteenth-century building, a former Ragged School for poor Beaconsfield’s graphic identity has always been important, from the children, was erected by a wealthy and philanthropic family, the elegant early catalogues to its distinctive hand-blocked logo. The original Beaufoys, local distillers of vinegar and “British wine” (derived from dried logo was ‘exploded’ in 1998 when prospects for survival were uncertain; raisins).8 Vinegar, much in demand for hygienic purposes, proved highly it works in either direction to indicate coming-into-being or departure, profitable, the school being built and endowed by Henry Beaufoy in whichever seems applicable. memory of his wife, “who had taken an interest in” an earlier charitable school set up in a railway arch in the 1840s.9 The school in what was Most of the work produced during the last 15 years has been commissioned, then called Doughty Street opened in 1851, a grand structure with two following an early decision not to show externally generated work. Apart wings, one each for girls and boys, a central portico and pediment. Only from imposing a ferocious work-load, this was, as Siderfin commented, the southern, girls’ wing survives today, the rest of the building having a high risk strategy “where the brief is open and the end product unknown. been demolished “about 1904 when the railway was widened”.10 But by Risk taking with public money entails total confidence in the commissioned this time formal education had displaced such schools; the site was sold to artists.”7 The strategy has largely formed Beaconsfield’s identity, much the railway company and the proceeds used to found the nearby Beaufoy of the most memorable work having been in some sense political. Shane Institute (“a lovely Arts & Crafts building”) in Black Prince Road.11 Cullen’s The Agreement, 2002, is the most prominent of the works and events that are memorable for their ideological content. The former school was derelict when Beaconsfield took it over on a 20- year lease after protracted negotiations with Railtrack, owner of the Acutely sensitive in Ireland, The Agreement was jointly funded through freehold. However, it retained much of its original character and fabric: an unprecedented collaboration between the Arts Councils of England, floors, windows, cast iron pillars and penny-struck brickwork are the Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, with numerous smaller most obvious features. Most of the conversion work, funded through organisations. Masterminded by Beaconsfield and the artist, the complex private donations sourced by Neill, was led by Crawforth. It provided negotiations that preceded its completion became incorporated into a flexible ground floor space which accommodates the bar, toilets the concept of the work and its broader significance. In this spirit of and office and has proved ideal for screenings and social events. The co-operation the monumental work was exhibited to acclaim between former school room on the upper level is a very high, flexible space with 2002 and 2004 first in Dublin, courtesy of Project Art Centre, then at abundant natural light. An oculus high on the back wall conveys regular the Orchard Gallery in Derry; in Beaconsfield’s Arch space; in Belfast, auditory signals from passing trains and has been turned to account by Portadown and finally in the grounds of Kilkenny Castle, during the Arts several artists. The physical character of the building, demonstrably Festival. This last outdoor venue was recognised as potentially hazardous unlike the sparse basements fashionable in the 1990s, is inseparable from but its singularity was felt to outweigh the risk. This proved, however, 7 Siderfin, Naomi ed,Rude Mechanic, the ethos and identity of Beaconsfield. A much-repeated description pin- to be a bad judgement as the panels were blown over by a high wind and exhibition catalogue, Beaconsfield, 1996, points the building’s central role: “The Beaconsfield venue provides a severely damaged. The work has since been remade and a place promised unpaginated. laboratory and presentation space for artists, occupying a niche between for it in the collection of the Irish Museum of Modern Art when a donor 8 Martin, Jean, “Colonel Mark Beaufoys the institution, the commercial and the ‘alternative’.” can be found. Recognised as one of the most politically potent works FRS (1764–1827)”, Lambeth Archive of art made in the United Kingdom or the Republic of Ireland in the Department pamphlet. The extent to which the building has itself generated work was twentieth century, its commissioning by an English micro-organisation 9 London County Council, Survey of London, demonstrated by Engineer, an exhibition-as-event in six autonomous parts represents an extraordinary achievement. XXIII, South Bank and Vauxhall, London, 1951, which ran for almost a year in 2003–2004. It exemplified Beaconsfield’s pp 142–3. curatorial approach, with its implicit attitude of “try it and see what 10 London County Council, Survey of London, happens”, sustained by extreme attention to detail. Engineer was Building—crisis—survival 1951, pp 142–3. cumulative: each part remained in place throughout and all were designed 11 Jeffers, Jeffe in Siderfin, Naomi ed,Push the to be physically, visually and psychologically destabilising. Engineer With the opening of the Newport Street building, the founders Envelope: Sustaining Arts Communities on the articulated the structure of the building, which was boldly modified by of Beaconsfield became its curators. The shift from the relatively Left-bank, London: Beaconsfield with Riverside Georgina Batty, who ran an enclosed ramp up the side of the upper space. unpressured operations of Nosepaint to a fixed venue requiring funding, Community Development Trust, 2007, p 22. Too steep to walk up easily, it emphasised the vertiginous height of the

18 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Beaconsfield’s Progress, 1994–2014 19 room, even enabling visitors to peer through the oculus. Laura Ford then switch from heavy reliance on public subsidy to a more free and installed the Wreckers, a characteristic group of malign, child-like soft diverse approach. sculptures dressed in hangman’s hoods with bells, which clambered around the rest of the gallery. Soft sculpture was also the medium of Carina The immediate solution to the crisis came in December 1999 with a Diepens’ performative Cloth Heads that occupied the ground floor and rise in the LAB grant from £24,000 to £65,000 a year, enabling more overflowed into the street. Susan Collis confronted the perfect finish generous payment for the directors and the appointment of the first part- of paintwork and surfaces with skilfully sliced vinyl that put stains and time administrator. More or less simultaneously a local regeneration rings on the teak bartop and enabled an astonishingly prominent crack to scheme offered £25,000, subject to matched funding, to complete run through the building like an invading fury. In startling contrast, Katy Juggernaut, the long-term project to convert the railway arch into a usable Barlow’s Visit Palestine, a documentary about a peace activist working in space. This much discussed undertaking remained stalled until Railtrack Jenin, provided a dramatic note of political reality. Engineer extended into was discovered to be about to lease the arch to a car spraying company. At the Arch, a space particularly attuned to the unpredictable, where Kerry this point ACE provided emergency funding and Beaconsfield took it over Stuart performed Blackbird in bird costume to the soundtrack of “The Mull as a potential multi-functional space that would be available for hire and of Kintyre”. would hasten the reinvention of “the spirit of Nosepaint”.13

Beaconsfield “has a relationship with the Primary schools and at the As requirements for self-generated funding increased, the directors same time with international artists and curators”, indicating the became financially inventive, occasionally renting out the spaces and numerous strands of creativity and practice among its multi-media, running events with nominal membership and pay bars. Further cash- cross-disciplinary undertakings.12 Yet this diversity has been problematic, generating schemes have been developed, such as Fraternise, through because funding bodies seek a single, inevitably inflexible identity. which artists may pledge a work of art to the Beaconsfield Collection As a result of such restrictive thinking and because of its origins in as a gift, to be added to the online collection. Beaconsfield Editions Nosepaint, Beaconsfield was initially classified as a live arts organisation is a parallel enterprise, which includes rightsrepeated, the text of the which implicitly threatened its freedom to exhibit other art forms. 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights as recited by Monica Ross The directors’ determination to enact the implications of an artist-led in performance; Bob and Roberta Smith’s hugely successful, Kosuth- organisation rather than allow it to become an institution also brought inspired poster, Hiding Places and Shane Cullen’s Last Will. Etched on problems. At first, the annual programmes were over-loaded, given the ceramosteel plates, this is the text of the final letter written to his family curatorial resources, but a more serious difficulty underlies Beaconsfield’s by the Republican leader Michael Joseph O’Rahilly as he lay dying of artistic agenda. It has developed through an experimental programme gunshot wounds in the 1916 Rebellion in Dublin. that instigates a constant dialogue informing the curatorial process and generating fresh approaches and projects. Such an approach implicitly acknowledges the possibility of failure but it also imposes a state of Manifestation—artists—strategies insecurity that is both creative and, in the long term, intolerable. The venue opened on 13 September 1995 with Plein Air, in which a By the end of 1998 the organisation had reached a crisis point. Crawforth single canvas, View of Venice, 1856, by Félix Ziem hung in the upper and Siderfin were underpaid, exhausted and frustrated by their inability space, accompanying an installation by the German performance to pursue their individual practices. They had considered Beaconsfield artist, Matthias Jackisch. He created it during a month-long residency to be under threat for some time, having told LAB the previous year that which was played out live as a continuous performance during they would have to close without increased funding. Inexperience, lack of exhibition hours. A more radical undertaking in 1995 than it would be assistance and an acute difference of approach from the Chairman were 12 Siderfin,Push The Envelope, p 21. today, it was a model for many that followed.14 The residency reflected all to blame, as was the programme: it was impossible for two ostensibly 13 Siderfin, Naomi and David Crawforth, Jackisch’s research into the locality, echoing the strange poetic part-time curators to manage eight projects a year, plus administration letter to Daniel Brine, ACE, 27 July 1998. connections that Ziem had established with foreign places during his and fund-raising. Siderfin temporarily resolved her problem by working 14 See Siderfin, Naomi, “Carry on Curating” constantly migratory life.15 During a difficult opening performance as Associate Director from 2001 on a project-linked consultancy basis, in Grayson, Richard ed, This Will not Happen (building work finished only an hour before it started and the artist returning early in 2004. Simultaneously activities were reduced to without You, Sunderland: University of was hindered by an ebullient party atmosphere) Jackisch shaved half two major and two less demanding experimental projects annually, Sunderland Press, 2007, pp 127–131. his head, completing the process during his closing performance, plus intermittent low-budget solo exhibitions. These initially took the 15 Elena Lledó in Plein Air, exhibition when he demolished his installation. form of the Field series which, running through 1999–2000, initiated a catalogue, Beaconsfield, 1995.

20 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Beaconsfield’s Progress, 1994–2014 21 Performance runs through most of the activities at Newport Street. and a fully functional Arch, the organisation was ready to consolidate its Ranging from Moral Plinth, 2004, which provided “A microphone, an success. The Bob and Roberta Smith phenomenon that has so often been audio line input, a video projector, a soapbox for free speech” to anyone a comic, edgy presence, ran a Soup Kitchen with concrete food in the wishing to use them, to Cottage Industry, 1995, it constitutes a seam of lower space where the wall was papered with the hugely popular Hiding creative anarchy. Cottage Industry, curated by Siderfin, was a “home and Places print. Performance and sound works punctuated the ten weeks, studio-based installation” involving seven women.16 Split between venues with appearances by Mark Dean, Bruce Gilbert, Bruce Gilchrist and Ian that included the Peabody Buildings in Chelsea, a private site in north Hinchliffe, who in 2008 was to undertake Estate—the Ian Hinchliffe London and Beaconsfield’s upper space, it acknowledged that the making Retrospective, a live art and archival installation covering thirty years of of art is often a part-time activity constrained by domestic circumstances. performance, in which Jeff Nuttall recognised “the basic dream of true Five years later Emma Dexter commented that during the 1990s “As many anarchism”.19 Hayley Newman conceived Woodshed, a platform designed key artworks have been made in bedrooms and kitchens as in expensive by Eric Rosoman at the entrance to the Arch, which was also used studios.”17 Thus Clare Palmier presented her work informally at home while by Monica Ross for her first presentation of rightsrepeated and for Bob Siobhan Davies hollowed out a pit in her living-room floor and filled it with and Roberta Smith’s Birdsong, “a soundscape using wildlife recordings clay shapes like children’s building blocks, calling the work Dust to Dust. found at boot fairs”, created with Crawforth. Anna Best, then an artist trustee of Beaconsfield, requested a public meeting of the Board, to Conversely, other solo shows have been complex multi-media undertakings present it in performance as a local phenomenon. Fortunately only two emerging from a discursive evolutionary progress. Carl Michael von observers turned up. Hausswolff began his 2005 project with an email: “A new work as a commission is also fine... let’s see what will come forth. A concert Saturday screenings of film and video ran throughout Chronic Epoch and would also be possible” and “The new work might be a low frequency have since become a prominent strand in Beaconsfield’s programming. sound work”; the only demand is for inventiveness. Von Hausswolff set In 2005 they ranged from Matt Hale’s video works, documenting what up a triptych using all three spaces, involving two DVDs, light and sound 16 See Siderfin, Naomi, ed, Cottage Industry, David Beech described as “simple tasks” such as Balancing Act and Kick installations and an “olfactory sensation”. A comparable undertaking exhibition catalogue, with essay by Kate the Bucket (rural), to Handsworth Songs by Black Studio Collective, which was the pair of complementary installations, among Beaconsfield’s most Bush, 1995. recorded unrest within black communities in 1985. Beaconsfield spectacular, made by the young Finnish artist, Markus Copper and curated 17 Dexter, Emma, “London 1990–2001” in itself has commissioned various films, outstanding examples being by Crawforth in 2002. They involved sculpture, bricollage on a grand scale Century City: Art and Culture in the Modern von Hausswolff’s Alamut, 2002, Katie Barlow’s Visit Palestine, 2004, and extraordinarily dramatic sound, tailored to the spaces of the building. Metropolis, exhibition catalogue, London: Tate and Courage to Refuse, 2009, a collaboration for which she provided Greenwich Degree Zero, devised by Tom McCarthy and Rod Dickinson, Modern, 2001, p 91. documentary footage from Jenin and Israel. Crawforth contributed a was a surreal interweaving of half-forgotten history with robust latter-day 18 Minutes of Trustees and Managers General sonic accompaniment to offset recorded on-site sound, overlaid by Shane imaginings. Starting from a recorded, if unsuccessful, attempt to blow Meeting, 15 February 1996; Siderfin ed, Cullen’s and John Buckley’s Hebrew transcription of the names of the up Greenwich Observatory in 1894, the artists progressed as though the Nosepaint-Beaconsfield, p 37. Israeli military resistance group from which the film took its title.20 destruction had taken place, creating a purportedly documentary film of 19 Jeff Nuttall in Estate: the Ian Hinchliffe Equally revisionary was The Way Out, 2009, by the collective, 15mm the event backed up by extensive contemporaneous news coverage. Retrospective, exhibition catalogue, Beaconsfield, Films, which seeks to subvert conventional perceptions of normality and 1998, unpaginated. disability. The film uses parody and black humour to argue that people A rare, delightful exhibition of paintings by Mikey Cuddihy was hung 20 This was positioned within the Chicago- are disabled not by medical conditions but by barriers to “access and in the upper space in 1998; the single-mindedness of the work seemed based Culture and Conflict group, of which social inclusion”.21 extraordinary, so strong had the sense of Beaconsfield’s interdisciplinarity Cullen was a member. The group focuses become. Yet “single artists and their interventions” are always within on unconventional means of delivery Just as Nosepaint’s gigs involved food, wine and talk, Beaconsfield’s the curators’ sights, exemplified by Field, a series of small, low budget and reception as pathways to reversing projects use the space in a way that is intensely social, informal and shows “designed to provoke a sense of intimacy and brinkmanship” with perceptions of historical conflicts. interactive. Perhaps interactivity is really the point of the hidden life of minimal administration.18 Crawforth provided the first, exhibiting Little 21 Williamson, Aaron, http://www.15mmfilms. Beaconsfield in that those who frequent the building are also those who Dancer, an immaculate bronze cast of a cockroach, dramatically spot-lit in com/html/transcript.htm, accessed 7 July 2009. bring alive events like Juggernaut (putting Viagra into young hands): a Perspex case in the upper gallery, defying the emptiness around it. 22 Society’s first event was an evening of a one-night concatenation of performance, dance, film and music, or screenings that included Fischli and Weiss’s Society, a “club that offers its members regular access to good films, good Interdisciplinarity was at the core of Chronic Epoch, the ten-week The Way Things Go and Mike Leigh’s Life is music, good wine, food, good discussion and good company”.22 Today celebration in 2005 of Beaconsfield’s first decade of commissioning, Sweet, selected by Georgina Batty and Susan the Ragged Canteen attracts devotees to cake and excellent vegetarian experiment and survival. Being solvent, with a proven artistic programme Collis who were showing in Engineer. cooking as the best way yet devised to attract a local clientele. Most

22 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Beaconsfield’s Progress, 1994–2014 23 spectacularly Crawforth and Siderfin occasionally demonstrate their exchange between Beaconsfield and MUU-ry, a non-commercial gallery talent for throwing large parties interlaced with curatorship.23 Terminal, and artists’ association in Helsinki that promoted experimental art and arranged for Late at Tate, on 5 December 2008, involved performance, interdisciplinary collaboration. The return event, when Beaconsfield music, bars and the vicarious presence of Newman and Crawforth as went to Helsinki, took place in August 1997 with between the devil and a table-cleaning crew disguised in monkey suits and communicating the deep (blue) sea, a multi-media show that emphasised the presence of only with grunts, in a reprise of Monkey Diner, first presented during the artist’s body in the work, both in live performance and through video, Chronic Epoch. such as Mark Wallinger’s Angel which had its debut on this occasion. Thanks to Ampcom Productions Beaconsfield was able to sustain a Among the irregular, recurrent strands that run through Beaconsfield’s link between a Morris Minor parked in central Helsinki and other sites activities, Fraternise offers intermittent fund-raising events and across the city which included a bandstand on the Esplanade. Earlier in talks; Phase, initiated in 2010 by the year-long presence of Bob and the year Beaconsfield had collaborated with Mute on the technologically Roberta Smith, brings exhibitions and residencies by artists in mid- pioneering Ground Control: Artists’ Despatches from Lithuania and career. Recently Testbed offered curatorial mentoring residencies, England, which aspired to the promises of global technology six years while n.paradoxa Salon was a monthly women-only discussion forum. before VoIP went mainstream. Meanwhile, in the yard in Newport However, the sonic strand, focusing on experimental music and closely Street a composting toilet produced gas, enabling the cooking of identified with Crawforth’s personal practice, is consistently the most blinis. Manifested simultaneously in Vauxhall, Gateshead and Vilnius, prominent. Following Punch, which offered occasional performances of Ground Control gave rise to exhibitions in both countries, a website, a contemporary music and dance in 1995, the strength of the sonic strand symposium and a book.26 was confirmed by the second live residency, Rude Mechanic, in 1996. The title refers both to assistants at early medical operations while the If Ground Control was only partially visible in London, apart from a work undertaken by Crawforth and Newman established Beaconsfield grid of razor wire on the ground floor, Japanese artists have provided as a venue for sound art and serious contemporary music. They invited occasional, abundant spectacle. In 1997, Beaconsfield commissioned the the Finnish electronic sound artists, Mika Vainio and Ilpo Vaisanen installation that kick-started Tomoko Takahashi’s career (later bought (“darlings of the seriously experimental international music scene”) to by Charles Saatchi.) Takahashi spectacularly filled the upperspace explore “the visualisation of sound” with guests, who changed daily and with electronic equipment and cables to express the “visual music” included a Pentecostal choir. The product was 31 tracks from 100 hours of the building, while collaborating with the composer Neil Quinton of sound recorded live and mixed over a five-week period in an intense downstairs to provide an aural experience accessible on a Walkman. Four creative process.24 years later, Beaconsfield commissioned the Gutai performance artist Shozo Shimamoto, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, to make a new work Classic, 1997, was Beaconsfield’s first collaboration with [rout], a referring to his seminal performances of the early 1950s. Swinging from contemporary composers’ collective. Its directors were keen to perform a rope attached to the roof of the upper space, he hurled paint across outside conventional concert venues and to establish audiences among canvases laid out on the floor. The works that he made in a two-week contemporary visual art enthusiasts. The event, a combination of 23 An occasional series, Mother of All Parties period were displayed on the walls as they were produced. important modernist music with new work written by [rout]’s directors, (24 June 2006; 8 March 2008; 7 August 2008 proved hugely popular, exceeding its target audience by 100 per cent. with Matmos) presented celebrations of “the That Beaconsfield combines international links with a physical and It included several “spatially oriented” pieces, which confronted the avant-garde and the everyday”, doubling as conceptual place in London was demonstrated by its participation challenge of site-specificity that is conventionally associated with the fund-raisers. in Tate Modern’s exhibition, Century City: Art and Culture in the visual arts.25 During a six-week residency for Soundtrap, Aura Satz 24 Siderfin ed,Rude Mechanic. Modern Metropolis. It was represented by The Nosepaint-Beaconsfield created Glissolalia, a now renowned work that explores “acoustic illusions”, 25 [rout] was reviewed by Keith Potter, “Chaos Archive and The Nosepaint-Beaconsfield Papertrail, captioned as “A glimpse using unfamiliar scales and instruments such as the theremin. theory”, The Independent, 26 February 1997, p 31. into the files of one of the few surviving artist-led organisations of the 26 From 1993–1996 Jutempus was Vilnius’ first 90s, Beaconsfield, and its mythologised predecessor, Nosepaint.”27 It National—international—local artist-initiated space for interdisciplinary work; is a reminder that Beaconsfield’s history and archive are as central to subsequently Jutempus Projects has acted as its identity as its work and location and that its own short history is Beaconsfield has extensive international connections, especially with a communication base in which the founders’ inscribed in the longer chronicles of the city. Yet though the curators have Nordic countries. In 1996 RAX (it translates roughly as “Wow!”) was work focuses on gender in the context of successfully fostered international links, their innovative artistic policy the first Finnish group exhibition in this country, incorporating the Lithuanian development since 1989. has meant that local interest has not always been easy to sustain. British premier of the work of Eija-Liisa Ahtilla. RAX formed part of an 27 Century City, p 281.

24 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Beaconsfield’s Progress, 1994–2014 25 Nosepaint confronted the paradox of the public space: “The role of the an artisan school and museum in Vauxhall “in the spirit of the old Arts public gallery is to make what is often deemed to be a luxury activity and Crafts Movement” though to date there has been no advance on accessible to local people.”28 Beaconsfield stands or falls as a local its development despite discussions with numerous departments institution by its ability to engage with people on a level that alters mind- and organisations.31 sets. The directors have set themselves to attract those with little or no experience of the arts, a policy that has proved most successful in off-site Secondly, the question was posed of what it means to be local, given that events. Disorders was a 24 hour-long confrontation between artists and Beaconsfield considers itself “an international organisation as well as a mortality that took place in the summer of 1996 at St Thomas’s Hospital local one”. The response to this was: to celebrate the opening of the Guys’ and St Thomas’s Centre for Sleep Disorders. It involved performance, video, site-specific installation and And if you didn’t, presumably, you would find it hard to both make sense the production of objects. The performance artist Alastair Maclennan, a of the enterprise in your own creative terms, and maybe difficult to founding trustee of Beaconsfield, led the symbolic action of staying awake defend against a politically-minded audience who were challenging the for the full 24-hour cycle of Disorders, moving around the hospital with a point and purpose of your enterprise.32 wheelchair, a bunch of black balloons and a willingness to chat. This led to a discussion of the local impact of Tate Modern, opened in Of all the artists closely associated with Beaconsfield, Anna Best has 2000, and Siderfin’s comment: perhaps been the most consistently preoccupied with the local. She has described her purpose in Visionhire, her contribution to Glean, during When we founded Beaconsfield our mission statement was to which she conducted a study of part of a Regeneration Area. This was fill a niche between the institution, the commercial, and the ‘alternative’. Beaconsfield’s first significant engagement with the problems of local What we were saying was that we didn’t want to be pigeon-holed regeneration. Glean—simultaneously manifested as an exhibition by in any of those categories. But the question remains, where do you Robert Beard, Best, Keith Coventry and Tamsin Pender—was envisaged position yourself? You just get on with it, really.33 as an investigation of the process of making a work of art, given that process is integral to a completed work. Beard demonstrated this point Following Push the Envelope, various attempts were made to gather local during the closing view when, as was his habitual practice, he destroyed arts organisations under a common umbrella. None was particularly the plaster installation that he had made during the course of the event. successful until Common Practice emerged under the leadership of Polly Though Glean probably raised more questions than it answered, most Staple, Director of Chisenhale Gallery. Funded by the Arts Council, it obviously as regards the difficulty of going beyond token engagement, a has promoted high quality work at several small venues, including Matt’s continuing commitment to the locality resulted in a more searching event Gallery and Studio Voltaire. Though Beaconsfield would, hypothetically, some years later. willingly work within such a group it is not part of Common Practice; its incompatibility with that model is clarified by Sarah Thelwall’s Push the Envelope was a symposium on arts-led regeneration organised illuminating report on Common Practice. This confirms that an by Siderfin for Beaconsfield and the Riverside Community Development idiosyncratic, unpredictable identity grounded in curatorship as an art Trust, that took place on 19 July 2006, to imitate a discussion on practice is considered incompatible with adherence to a group ethos.34 local arts projects in Vauxhall.29 The speakers were Tony Carter (artist The point is underlined by the absence from the enumeration of assets and Principal, City & Guilds of London Art School), Richard Grayson considered desirable for small organisations of any reference to creativity. (artist and curator), Anna Harding (Chief Executive, Space Studios), Jeffe Jeffers (Director, Lady Margaret Hall Settlement), Peter St John 28 Siderfin and Crawforth,Nosepaint- Beaconsfield’s results are not readily quantifiable; it thrives on unpredictability; (Caruso St John Architects) and Sheena Wagstaff (Chief Curator, Tate Beaconsfield, p 3. is aware that the creative ‘what-if’ matters more than footfall and that Modern). They addressed questions concerning Beaconsfield’s place in 29 Siderfin,Push the Envelope. process takes priority over a predetermined outcome. Siderfin set out the local and wider arts communities, considering firstly the pros and 30 Siderfin,Push the Envelope, p 23. Beaconsfield’s ethos with an unanswerable challenge: “What if, having cons of regeneration with reference to the experience of SPACE Studios 31 Siderfin,Push the Envelope, p 24. taken control of our own discourses, we’re not prepared to give in Hackney and the imminent closure of SPACE’s Vauxhall studios. 32 Siderfin,Push the Envelope, p 21. them up?” For Crawforth and Siderfin, curatorial, artistic and social Damien Hirst’s proposal (now a reality) for a restaurant and gallery in 33 Siderfin,Push the Envelope, p 32. practice are intellectually identical; the work that they produce is Newport Street was also taken into account, as was the possibility of 34 Sarah Thelwall, Size Matters: Notes towards a characterised by a fluidity that renders it unclassifiable; it is allusive, reskilling “the deskilled, unskilled populations which are now living Better Understanding of the Value, Operation and consistently political and subversive in its evasion of predictability. on our estates”.30 To mitigate this situation it was proposed to set up Potential of Small Visual Arts Organisations, July 2011.

26 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Beaconsfield’s Progress, 1994–2014 27 End-game

The lease on the Newport Street building is approaching its end and, having survived 20 years of grindingly hard work and financial privation and wrought considerable artistic success from them, Beaconsfield is moving towards a new identity, signalled by the enigmatic dissolve of the logo. But the dissolve is not complete; there are ideas, proposals, perhaps a scheme for the future. To complete this book is to enact some kind of closure on Beaconsfield’s first phase; it remains to be seen if the logo will change direction and move forward again.

Margaret Garlake

Selected invitation cards 1994–2014, designs conceived by Beaconsfield, layout by David Allen from 1994, Damien Jacques from 1996, David Crawforth from 1999

28 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Beaconsfield’s Progress, 1994–2014 29 ‘The Lisson Gallery’ Matthew Arnatt, David Crawforth, David Mollin 1994

‘The Lisson Gallery’ exhibition view showing guinea pigs (David Crawforth) and drawings on pink copy paper (David Mollin), 5 Topham Street, London, EC1, March, 1994

“The title ‘The Lisson Gallery’ simultaneously denotes a short-circuiting of expectation and refers to the work published in advertisement form, ‘The Lisson Gallery’.

The responses of the artists to a situation where the context of their showing appeared to be the subject of the show, remains the subject of a show. Matthew Arnatt has chosen to display ‘texts’ which prefabricate criticism relating to the circumstances of their showing. David Crawforth’s installation utilises live guinea pigs, a piece he describes as: ‘... a study of potential misfortune”. David Mollin... confidently asserts: “I’m very happy to be showing at ‘The Lisson Gallery’—to me it is a sign of my growing success within the Art World.’

Tucked in a derelict pub at the end of an alley, ‘The Lisson Gallery’ could hardly have resembled less its influential namesake. The ‘real’ Lisson Gallery is established, spacious, spotless, silent; ‘The Lisson Gallery’ was hard to locate, transitory, cramped, poorly lit.... David Crawforth’s herd of guinea pigs scurried about, beeping on the sawdust floor, along walls covered with unremittingly dim-witted pen and pencil drawings by David Mollin, and text works by Matthew Arnatt in which the phrase ‘Old Nick’ seemed to signify what Arnatt imagines as some consonance between the ‘dark prince’ of both the underworld and the London art scene (Nicholas Logsdail is the Lisson’s director).”

Jeffrey Kastner, Review, Flash Art, March/April, 1994

30 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH ‘The Lisson Gallery’ 31 A Public Work of Art BAW 1995

BAW (Beaconsfield Art Works), A Public Work of Art, 1995, bronze, concrete paving slab, 1,500 watt sound speaker

Opposite: A Public Work of Art, 1995, installation view outside Royal Festival Hall, The Queen’s Walk, London, SE1

“By the Thames, in Queen’s Walk, a giant coin, forged from bronze is thrown down on the paving, and lies, still trembling as though from the impact of its fall. The passing public might note its quivering feathers or its motto, A Public Work of Art, and understand that they have paid for its minting. Set flush with the pavement, this dishonourable medal is a glistening cover for something perilous stirring below, something less heard than felt in the bones....”

Whether the enigmatic, solipsistic inscription indicates a conferral of identity by naming or a declaration of function is unclear but its form is that of the commemorative medal, the mnemonic for the good, the great and those whom history has set aside, their deeds and personalities forgotten since they belong to a version of history that has been displaced in favour of another narrative, another truth, another theory. All that remains are some haunting images, some unfamiliar names. Yet the commemorated personality clings tenaciously in memory: the shadow lingers longest at dusk, before darkness obliterates it. And so it is with our giant coin: it marks a fading history, felt rather than known.

Julian Stallabrass, Press release

32 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH PAGE TITLE 33 Plein Air Matthias Jackisch, Félix Ziem 1995

Beaconsfield’s inaugural exhibition involved a nineteenth-century painter, Félix Ziem, devoted to landscape, light and colour and a contemporary sculptor, Matthias Jackisch.

“This unusual association... calls attention to art’s end-product as either permanent or ephemeral, as a collectable thing circulating in a specific commercial structure or as a transient creative experience which challenges the singular value of the artistic object... these dilemmas Plein Air exhibition view with Félix Ziem, View in contemporary art have triggered Beaconsfield’s curatorial of Venice, 1856, and Matthias Jackisch, imagination.... In the twentieth century landscape became a site for 5-week durational performance, Beaconsfield, performance: while Ziem painted trees, Joseph Beuys planted seven London, SE11, Wednesday–Sunday, 10–6 pm, thousand of them.... Similarly, while Ziem took as his subject the 14 September–13 October, 1995 seascapes of Venice or hundreds of gondolas, Matthias Jackisch has physically integrated some of these subjects into his more recent Opposite: Plein Air, exhibition view, Matthias performances, not as images but as props... in a performance called Jackisch, 5-week durational performance with Atlantis im Nacken which took place in 1992, Jackisch stood for a long time found objects, 1995 on an empty Spanish beach. With his back to the water and with a small receptacle on his head, he remained still, eyes closed. His experience was not based upon visual perception, nor was his action skilled or productive, he simply drew breath and listened... like a living totem that no technologised civilisation would worship.... Today the powerful influence of technology’s many forms over Western civilisation needs no stressing, nor does the fact that this technological development is sustained thanks to the increasing impoverishment of the already poor. It is interesting therefore that, coming from the former GDR and faced with coming to terms with the experience of the omnipotent West, Jackisch has increasingly turned to performance.... Vauxhall, like the old Ragged School and despite its rich history, has suffered the neglect and decay of so many areas of south London... it should not surprise us if Jackisch hires one of the caravans that are for rent outside the building as an instrument in which to pursue his adventures. If he searches hard enough and with too plain a vision, he might even find one of Ziem’s old paint brushes.”

Elena Lledó, Plein Air, exhibition catalogue, London: Beaconsfield, 1995

34 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Plein Air 35 Cottage Industry Sonia Boyce, Kate Bush, Mikey Cuddihy, Siobhan Davies, Elsie Mitchell, Claire Palmier, Naomi Siderfin 1995

“At the beginning of her life, she did not know how old she was.... But gradually, the word punctuality, meaning exactness to the minute, comes to rule her life.... Now, everything around her is designed to save time so she can squeeze more and more into her day.... She invests in a modem, a food-processor, a CD-ROM drive, a TV remote-control, voice-mail, e-mail, fax, home-shopping service, a remote-diagnosis machine, voice- conferencing, video-on-demand, the Daily Me, home-banking, virtual education and an electronic camera.... Living so perpetually in the present, she wonders where her past and future went.... He had his room, the small room off the bedroom.... Gradually, he came to spend longer and longer periods in this room.... She didn’t have a particular room, but she looked after all the rest, which also amounted to keeping things in order.... What she wants above all is to be in control of her own life and of all the Above: Naomi Siderfin, Monochrome (detail), anxieties which blow her about.... She paints, too.... She paints portraits 1995, oil and wax on floorboards, Upper of people until someone points out that the people are never there.... She Space, Beaconsfield, London, SE11, is always left looking at a picture of herself.... Before, she had accepted the Cottage Industry flatness of her life, and the limits of her space, because she always knew Right: Siobhan Davies, Dust to Dust, 1995, where to find herself on the plane. Now she craves more dimensions, and home front room excavation, Islington, the hierarchy of perspective. She worries that she can never be interesting London, N1, Cottage Industry enough to be the sole object of her attention, so she ventures out of the house... she likes the element of surprise. She no longer worries about the people missing from her portraits, because she finds that strangely, everything she touches turns to art.”

Claire Palmier, Home and Away, 1995, Peabody Kate Bush, Cottage Industry, exhibition catalogue, London: Beaconsfield, 1995 Buildings, Chelsea Manor Street, London, Sw3, Cottage Industry Monochrome (Anchored) Sonia Boyce, They’re Almost Like Twins, 1995, inkjet photographs, outside wall, Beaconsfield, I still don’t entirely know what the anchor was about. Suspended centrally London, SE11, Cottage Industry from the ceiling it served a critical sculptural purpose in the room and Elsie Mitchell, Isle of Lewis, 1995, 35mm photos seemed to speak of my new condition of being tethered to the building. We and Super8 film, Lower Space, Beaconsfield, found it on the Suffolk coast near Martlesham Creek and had it industrially London, SE11, Cottage Industry chromed to become silver in colour.

Monochrome was perhaps the third in a series of ‘situated’ paintings. It articulated my frustration at no longer having time in the studio for contemplative painting activity. I made up a stretcher in my favourite painting size (5ft x 4ft) and positioned it mid-right on the idiosyncratic slope of the wooden floor upstairs. The floorboards were more than a

36 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Cottage Industry 37 Mikey Cuddihy, Worksurface,1995, ink century old and I protected them with several layers of molten on Lotke paper with Naomi Siderfin, candle wax. The wax took up the grain of the wood like a brass Monochrome, 1995, oil and wax on rubbing. I then painted layer upon layer of Mike Harding’s Lead White: floorboards, silver-chromed anchor and chain, to my knowledge, the most expensive oil paint available in London at Upper Space, Beaconsfield, London, SE11, the time. It was truly beautiful. The sumptuous white rectangle on Cottage Industry the floor plane complemented Mikey Cuddihy’s Room, (Indian ink on Lotke paper, 1996), a large-scale doodle drawing on a literal template of the wall area of her East End studio in Beck Road, with spaces cut out to indicate windows, doors and plug sockets. Hung in the top, left- hand corner of the room, the grand scale of the gallery dwarfed the architectural ghost of a domestic interior.

However, my painting was far from dry by the preview, during which a child attempted to jump over it, missed and trailed white footprints around the rest of the Dark Oak stained floor. Also beautiful, but raised the question concerning intention. Decision eventually taken to clean up, leaving footprint in the painting for the six-week duration of the exhibition.

Naomi Siderfin

38 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Cottage Industry 39 Gargantua Robert Ellis Uli Aigner, Keith Arnatt, BAW, Debbie Booth, Wayne Lloyd and 1996 Laurence Harvey, Robert Fraser Munro and Jeremy Blank, O(rphan) d(rift>), Polskadavians, PUT PUT, Patricia Scanlan, Trebor Scholtz, Strike 6 June 1996

Lawrence Harvey in collaboration with Wayne Lloyd aka Wayne Winner, Gargantua, 1996

Robert Ellis, commissioned by Beaconsfield to Robert Ellis’ one man show involved drawings, tape recordings, catch pigeons in Trafalgar Square, London, for writings and a small rectangular table with a wedge under one use as a full-page advertisement published in leg and a neatly cut, layered cardboard sculpture placed on its Art Monthly, 200, June, 1996 surface.... Beaconsfield sent him off with a cardboard box to catch pigeons in Trafalgar Square for publicity purposes. His show was remarkable, not only for its content but for attracting coverage of Beaconsfield by Art Monthly.

“There is no particular urgency to Robert Ellis’ art.... The bulk of Ellis’ art is an on-going series of ‘drawings’. Never more than A4 in size, at a casual glance these diminutive works suggest the fragments of a larger uncompleted picture, but this belies a rigour that determines their outcome. The starting point is often the simple beginnings of rather delicate pencil or pen sketches that record the incidental occurrence of objects or architectural space that somehow spark off a process of Gargantua was an almost midsummer “event of excess, incomparable curiosity in the artist’s mind.” violence, greed and incontinence, ubiquity, vast knowledge and warlike nature” curated by Nosepaint (for Beaconsfield) and devised to launch Julian Andrew Cross, “Drawing a Fine Line”, Art Monthly, 202, November 1996 Stallabrass’ book, Gargantua: Manufactured Mass Culture, 1996.

“Over a 12 hour period in the gallery, sub-basement and walled yard, artists will respond to themes within the book and reflect upon the implications of manufactured culture on the production and presentation of contemporary ‘high’ art.”

Press release

40 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Robert Ellis 41 Disorders: Art from Dawn to Dawn Kirsty Alexander and Paul Burwell, BAW, Anne Bean, John Carson, Sarah Cole, David Cunningham, Bruce Gilchrist with Nick Rogers, Matthias Jackisch, Michal Klega, Rona Lee, Alastair Maclennan, Guillaume Paris, Sonja Zelic 15/16 August 1996

Alastair Maclennan, 24 hour action, St Thomas’ “Disorders: Art from Dawn to Dawn [was] conceived as a project which Kirsty Alexander and Paul Burwell, dancers in and started again, working as in a dream” and a writer “wired up to Hospital, London, SE1, Disorders, 15–16 juxtaposes the activities of workers in the cultural sector with their 24 hour action, St Thomas’ Hospital, London, an eeg machine, his brain waves being monitored by a computer. He August, 1996 counterparts in the health sector.... Over a cycle of 24 hours, artists will SE1, Disorders, 15–16 August, 1996 has previously been asked to think about his unwritten book”. take their work processes to the hospital and participate in the ongoing battle with mortality, operating side by side with the teams that Event leaflet sustain and improve life in the face of physical illness. During the time allocated the artists’ parallel work will perhaps serve to distract, amuse or fascinate its temporary audience.

The project draws attention to health issues around sleep and its disorders and anticipates the opening of the new Guy’s and St Thomas’ Sleep Centre—the first unit in the UK for the research, diagnosis and treatment of the full range of sleep disorders.”

Artists’ interventions included Anne Bean’s piece “where order and disorder, sleeping and waking, embrace each other and explore their incestuous edges”; John Carson’s “wandering presence... loosely based on the sandman”; Matthias Jackisch “making sculptures to be destroyed

42 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Disorders: Art from Dawn to Dawn 43 Rax Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Andy Best and Merja Puustinen, Pia Lindman, Pekka Niskanen, Roi Vaara 1996

Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Through, 1996, video still, Rax

Opposite: Roi Vaara, A Man Blind to his Faults, 1996, recycled garment installation, Beaconsfield, London, SE11, Rax

RAX was both the first group exhibition of contemporary Finnish art and the debut of the film maker, Eija-Liisa Ahtila in Britain. Involving film, video, photography and performance, it was an important manifestation of ‘new’ media in collaboration with ampcom (Best and Puustinen) and in association with MUU. Meaning ‘other’, this curatorial organisation covered “media art, performance, installation, environmental and conceptual art”.

“Best and Puustinen placed posters around Vauxhall; Ahtila presented a triptych, Through, a poetic non-narrative about accident victims; Niskanen made a poster work focusing on bisexuality; Lindman engaged eloquently with Terry Farrell’s nearby MI5 building, while Vaara spectacularly stood for five hours with his head buried inside a cloud of brilliantly coloured cloth.”

Julian Stallabrass, “Media art in a Modernist Climate”, Art Monthly, 202, December 1996; reviews in Siksi, 4, 1996; Time Out, 9–16 October, 1996.

44 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Rax 45 Rude Mechanic: A Visualisation Of Sound In Four Parts PAN SONIC, DAVID CRAWFORTH and HAYLEY NEWMAN WITH GUESTS: DAVID CUNNINGHAM, ROBERT ELLIS, SIMON FISHER-TUNER, BRUCE GILBERT, DAVID GILCHRIST, ALISON GOLDFRAPP, TINA HUCZKIWSKI, KOAN, KAFFE MATTHEWS, PUT PUT, SANCTUARY MINISTRIES MUSIC TEAM, SCANNER, SQUAREPUSHER, SUSAN STENGER, JIMI TENOR, PAUL THOMAS 1996

Installation view, Hayley Newman and Rude Mechanic (a visualisation of sound in four parts) devised by myself and artist David Crawforth, durational performance, David Crawforth incorporating the invited collaboration of Finnish sound duo Beaconsfield, London, SE11, Rude Mechanic, Pan Sonic. The month-long project which took place at Beaconsfield in Vauxhall Thursday–Sunday, 12–6pm, 9 November–7 in London was divided into four sub headed groups: i) Jungle disintegration December, 1996 (dismantling prerecorded, live and broadcasted jungle to its origins), ii) Pentecostal (transcendental immaterialism self detached from the spiritual), iii) Analogic (non- digitised physical sound), iv) Cubical (domestic nerds on the edge of banality). Thursday–Sunday 12–6, Total working time: 110 hours.

Standing on ladder banging chain against it—Robert Ellis starts mechanically jumping up and down on a trampoline next to me wearing a blonde wig. Prostrate, hanging a moon with a balloon up my arse—light match under balloon which explodes against my cheeks.

The title ‘Rude Mechanic’ was taken from the Rude Mechanicals—assistants in early medical surgery who performed all the most crude and physical tasks such as trepanation, sawing off and disposal of limbs in operations. Myself and David Crawforth took the role of the Mechanicals, a role in which we saw ourselves as crude workers in opposition to the more refined sound production and manipulation of our Finnish collaborators Pan Sonic.

The process involved the mechanicals or more often the invited guest musician providing sonic input which was selectively processed and regurgitated into the space by Pan Sonic. The Mechanicals worked continuously in the space over this period manipulating atmosphere both with, and at a tangent to, Pan Sonic.

Making ghost costume by cutting eye holes in sheet whilst wearing it over my head. Dragging chains around under sheet.

Pan Sonic were located to the left of the entrance, their equipment installed on three Ikea wallpapering tables. The Mechanicals occupied the rest of the upper gallery space, the centre piece being a manually operated builders’ power climber which enabled us to winch ourselves vertically to the height of approximately 10 metres. The power climber served as a storage space for tools as well as allowing us vertical access to the space. At the back of the space was a wall-sized data projection of Pan Sonic’s oscilloscope, responding to the sound frequencies being produced. The projection

46 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Rude Mechanic: A Visualisation Of Sound In Four Parts 47 became more apparent as the natural light in the space diminished through twilight into darkness. The installed equipment and objects were functional.

Sitting opposite Robert Ellis, he is wearing a blonde wig, I’m dressed as a ghost wearing a sheet over my head. Robert plays his cassettes and I drink coffee through the sheet and write backwards messages to try to communicate with him.

The notion behind the collaboration was a) to question our own individual identities as artists and our own ‘cultivated’ work practices, b) to detract from individual attainment but maintain notions of multiplicity, c) escape claims of linear progression often made upon work by both artists and viewers.

Spraying self/air/each other with water spray gun & blow drying self/ each other dry with hair dryers. Drilling holes in shoes between toes.

Activities were structures which may have unfolded over the singular period of a day alongside other singular structures ie starting work with activity A, starting activity B, starting activity C, return to activity A, return to activity C, start activity D, return to activity B (like the constant deferral of the punch line of a joke). Each activity took as long as was needed to complete the activity.

A miked-up camera takes the initial photo on the first day, the sound is processed and sampled. Sticking audio tape around the edges of a table to make a little cubby hole to hide in. Hair dryer under audio tape-table, blowing out the individual strands of tape.

The Mechanicals mainly made live sound in the space either intentionally or non- intentionally. Objects were often used as acoustic sound making tools. Materials such as audio tape were a mute reference to a potential sonic material and a feeling of sonic impotence.

Making fringing out of audiotape to stick onto my motorcycle leathers and Top: Installation view, Hayley Newman, transform myself into an inflatable guitar-playing cowboy. durational performance, Beaconsfield, London, Torches under the audio tape-table, which cast shadows of the hanging tape SE11, Rude Mechanic, Thursday–Sunday, 12– on the floor around me. Other activities under the table included drinking 6pm, 9 November–7 December, 1996 coffee, blowing smoke out through the audio tape strands (catching the Bottom: Installation view, Mika Vainio (Pan Sonic), exhaled smoke in torch light), sticking feet through tape, removing and durational performance, Beaconsfield, London, reapplying nail polish to toenails. Burning toes off of tights whilst still SE11, Rude Mechanic, Thursday–Sunday, 12– wearing them. 6pm, 9 November–7 December, 1996 Cleaning each other with ‘Leather Care’. To let progression happen through the discourse of practice is not a process of refining Opposite: Installation view, David Crawforth, through practice, but maybe a way of exploring differing work modes within an durational performance, Beaconsfield, London, existing situation or structure. SE11, Rude Mechanic, Thursday–Sunday, 12– 6pm, 9 November–7 December, 1996

48 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH PAGE TITLE 49 Drilling Helmets. knowing brought feelings of isolation and insecurity. At high points my aim was to Drilling holes in suits and shoes, and inserting knobs from the shop ‘Tandy’. sustain that moment and flow for as long as possible until I inevitably felt the process Lights on helmets. start falling apart again and became lost, disempowered and incapacitated. Exploding bananas laced with crackers. Cracker in helmet, helmet catches fire. Wanting to lose myself or the notion of myself within the collective group Placing objects on the ground and shaking talc over them—object shadows and to become a single organism. Instead often felt isolated. remained on the floor once the objects were removed. Cleaning floor and falling asleep next to a pile of dirt.

Installation view, David Crawforth, durational The objects in the space were chosen a) because we already had them b) because of We slowed down as we got into the project, this could be attributed to two factors: a) performance, Beaconsfield, London, SE11, their function c) because we thought they would be funny d) because they were cheap. exhaustion b) getting used to existing and working within a six-hour time frame. Rude Mechanic, Thursday–Sunday, 12–6pm, 9 November–7 December, 1996 Filling leather motor cycle suit with balloons; falling onto it until all the Sweeping. balloons had burst. Going up and down in the power climber. Power climber used as tool box and storage space. Slide and video documentation made me realise how much we looked like-monkeys Room, minimal amount of objects, white cube. whilst wearing our leather motorcycle gear and helmets and also how gendered we remained despite our ‘costumes’. A month long residency in a gallery was the political relocation of performance Installation view, Hayley Newman and within a fine art context. David Crawforth, durational performance, Natural daylight turning into twilight and the feeling of the marking of a half Beaconsfield, London, SE11, Rude Mechanic, way point in our day’s work. Twilight sheltered us from the harsh light of day. Microphone skirt; dancing with David (circus music) and later on with Jimmy T. Thursday–Sunday, 12–6pm, 9 November–7 Hitting helmet encased head on wall whilst jumping up and down on trampoline. The use of artificial light: torches, blondes, fire made the work more like spectacle. December, 1996 Atmospheric manipulation had more impact through this use of light. The expression of aggression was an emotional response to the sound being made, a way of changing the atmosphere or a defence mechanism. Dealing with uncertainty through aggression and hyperactivity. Velcro stuck to wall and back of jacket, would attach myself to Moments of total clarity meant ‘knowing’ what all the parts were doing and wall to think and wait. predicting the overall movement of the work as it progressed. Being lost and not Peeling self off wall, velcro noise.

Installation view, Mika Vainio and Upo The close proximity of the audience brought with it a two-way sense of threat. Trying to blur Väisänen (Pan Sonic) with Bruce Gilbert, the delineation between performer and audience did not physically work as both elements durational performance, Beaconsfield, London, kept not only a physical distance but also maintained a passive/active relationship. SE11, Rude Mechanic, Thursday–Sunday, Sonically this boundary was easier to negotiate as sonic frequencies penetrated both the 12–6pm, 9 November–7 December, 1996 body and space. Physiological response, removing the edges of the individual.

Arranging the string of builders’ lights on the walls, floor and hanging from the power climber. Attaching speaker cable to end of drill, switching the drill on causes the cable to spin around in a big bundle.

In reading these notations on my own memories of action I find a characterisation of action led by the object which would set the ‘tone’ for a series of events. A deliberate unease and crudeness in the interface between mind, body and object. An attitude and heavy handedness with material aspiring to a notion of ‘botching it’. Smashing individual electrified light bulbs with a hammer. Throwing confetti from the top of the power climber, lights on the power

50 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Rude Mechanic: A Visualisation Of Sound In Four Parts 51 Installation view, Hayley Newman, durational climber directed downwards to illuminate its delicate fall. performance, Beaconsfield, London, SE11, Wanting to vomit during Bruce Gilbert’s day. Rude Mechanic, Thursday–Sunday, 12–6pm, 9 November–7 December, 1996 Physical exhaustion was compounded by the physical effects of exposure to extreme sound frequencies over a long period of time. On a few occasions the sound in the space appeared to have a visible physical mass.

Drilling holes into each others’ helmets and inserting birthday candles (pin-head); helmet on fire—burnt hand—hospital. Trying to swallow mike and retching. Pan Sonic and Scanner sitting on Whoopi cushions. Tea in the afternoons with a fake bone china tea set.

At the beginning of the project ritual was constructed into the daily activities, these rituals were an aid to dealing with the prospect of a six-hour time void ahead of us. These constructed rituals/activities were gradually replaced by freeform activity and other organically developed daily activities.

Setting off fire extinguisher from Power Climber, light on very last day of the project. Cleaning floor and falling asleep next to a pile of dirt.

Setting off fire extinguisher from Power Climber, light on powder resin as it filled the space and fell to earth. Clouds of dust. Hi-lighting incidental activities with torchlight. Light bulbs in plastic bag with torch, they seem to be switched on. David and I hiding in roof, last Pan Sonic concert, feet dangling through ceiling. Being Naughty.

Hayley Newman

(Italic type indicates Newman’s formal description of the project; sections in roman indicate her personal reactions during the performance)

52 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Rude Mechanic: A Visualisation Of Sound In Four Parts 53 Thatched BAW 1996

Master Thatcher Jason Morley thatching roof of bus shelter for BAW, Thatched, 1996, Tottenham Court Road, London, W1, 28 October

Opposite: BAW, Thatched, 1996, bus shelter, Norfolk reed, photocopied Right to Buy statistics, (repossessions), sound composition by Squarepusher, commissioned by FAT for Roadworks, Tottenham Court Road, London, W1

“In 1996, FAT (Fashion Architecture Taste) commissioned nine artists to temporarily modify one bus shelter.... All the shelters were installed in one day as they could not be left unfinished overnight for health and safety reasons. The installation lasted two weeks.... Beaconsfield Artworks hired Jason Morley from the Master Guild of Thatchers to thatch the roof of their bus stop. Morley, with the help of another thatcher, Mathew Fuller, thatched the bus stop in one day and sprayed it with a fire retardant.... Morley commented: ‘I consider all thatched roofs to be art, like straw sculptures, and the by- product is that you get a roof out of it. But a thatched roof on a glass bus stop still looked quite strange and definitely gave people something to talk about....’ A launch event was organised at the Tottenham Court Road YMCA and a Routemaster bus conducted tours of the shelters throughout the evening.”

We chose the bus shelter for its juxtaposition with a branch of the Halifax Building Society. The transparent windows intended for bus routes and advertising were occupied with blown-up pages copied from a paperback on Margaret Thatcher. The texts displayed were lists of statistics pertaining to council housing and home ownership through the Right to Buy scheme. A small sound system secreted within the bus shelter played one-man drum’n’bass by Squarepusher. When we arrived to meet the Master Thatcher (1996 winner of the Best Thatched House in Great Britain competition) on an October morning at 6am to begin the work, it was to find a man asleep in a couple of cardboard boxes in the doorway of the Halifax.

Jemima Montagu ed, Open Space: Art in the Public Realm in London 1995–2005, London: Public Works Group, 2007, pp 180–183; Naomi Siderfin

54 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Thatched 55 Ground Control: Artists' despatches from Lithuania and Britain Fiona Banner, Aida CeponytE and Valdas Ozarinskas, Lucy Gunning, Evaldas Jansas, Linas Liandzbergis, David Mollin, Deimantas NarkeviCius, ArtUras Raila with Darius CiUta, Robin Rimbaud aka Scanner, Jon Thomson and Alison Craighead 1997

Opposite left: Evaldas Janas, Eternal Fire, “The exhibition sought to explore the ground opened up by a kind of 1997, composting toilet in yard, Beaconsfield, cultural exchange, less of art objects, than of people and the kind of art London, SE11, Ground Control they could bring with them or could be transmitted between one country and another. Opposite right: David Crawforth and Lucy McMenemy online with Evaldas Jansas’ Eternal Twelve artists from England and Lithuania, have been invited to enter a Fire (detail), 1997, Beaconsfield, London, SE11, minefield, which turns out to be the everyday world. They are to detonate Ground Control its cultural contradictions with the aid of electronic devices. Travelling Opposite below: Arturas Raila with Darius with tourist visas between three cities, London, Vilnius, and Gateshead, Ciuta, Control is Of Utmost Importance, they report back via communications technologies to galleries that act as 1997, razor wire, pick-up microphones, ground-control stations monitoring their movements. Housed within the PA, Fiona Banner, As the Crow Doesn’t Fly, galleries are installations that reflect on the status of both art works and 1997, baize notice board, awaiting printed lived experience in the age of electronic production. email dispatches, Beaconsfield, London, SE11, Ground Control The dissemination and broadcasting of the work produce the social effect of critical art practice, causing audiences to focus attention on points of cultural ambiguity, where new forms of public communication are both possible and at risk.

These new bohemians are commissioned for a one-time stand. There is no fixed territory and they have no clear identities. Plugged into Ground Control by portable devices, they move boldly through geographic space—by car, train, aeroplane, even rowing machine.

The artists of Ground Control have been asked to create ‘lasting documents’ of ‘cultural moment in our time’—our own, inconspicuous and transient. Most of the electronic means they deploy are low-tech, available to more than the cultural elite. The effect of instantaneous transmission is to produce neither globalised generalities nor localised ethnographies, but ‘glocal’ experiences—publicly accessible and artistically unique.”

Susan Buck-Morss, “Art in the age of its electronic production” and Preface, Ground Control, London: Black Dog Publishing, 1997

56 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Ground Control: Artists Despatches from Lithuania and Britain 57 between the devil and the deep (blue) sea BAW, Stuart Brisley, Robert Ellis, Tracey Emin, Bruce Gilchrist, Hayley Newman, Mark Wallinger 1997

“between the devil and the deep (blue) sea presents the work of British artists city-wide in Helsinki... the focus for the selection of artists has been the presence of the artist’s body or personality as a dominant part of the work in each case.” “Beaconsfield... more interested in asking questions about art’s relation to its audience than in providing answers... will transport a piece of traditional English culture to Helsinki in the form of a Morris Minor pick-up. Permanently parked in Railway Square, the vehicle will form a locus for the durational actions of the collaborators” Above: Stuart Brisley, Helsinki Vanitas, 1997, It was linked to the other sites with a trail of dots of silver leaf applied live daily performance with x-ray of artist’s to the pavements by Siderfin with a gilding technique in a process skull, Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, that amounted to a constant performance. “Hayley Newman, a between the devil and the deep (blue) sea, performance artist particularly interested in sound... will be making 13–17, August a number of unusual appearances in and around the Esplanade Opposite: Tracey Emin, Something’s Wrong, bandstand;” “Stuart Brisley presents a new work in the Museum 1997, new monoprints, troll, Muu Gallery, of Contemporary Art, harnessing live performance to create a Helsinki, between the devil and the deep permanent work of art;” “Tracey Emin’s work is constructed from the (blue) sea intimate details of her own history... she will be showing new drawings about her life and experiences, and a video where the artist confronts the viewer with her stories;” Robert Ellis: “Photographs, drawings, a shelf and some readings... will be making some new works while in Helsinki to add to his installation;” Bruce Gilchrist “combines new technology with the human body and mind.... He will be utilising new video footage shot while in Helsinki to drive the interactive mechanisms within his installation;” “Mark Wallinger plays the central role in Angel, a video work in reverse.”

Bilingual event poster

58 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH PAGE TITLE 59 BAW, Pick-Up (details), 1997, Naomi Siderfin laying silver leaf trail on pavements of Helsinki, connecting galleries exhibiting in between the devil and deep (blue) sea

60 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Between The Devil And The Deep (Blue) Sea 61 Tomoko Takahashi 1997

Tomoko Takahashi, solo exhibition, (detail), “Takahashi is a consummate composer. Her work evolves out of an 1997, discarded technology gathered on-site engagement with the inherent function of each space she inhabits. at Beaconsfield, London, SE11 Contingent details are examined, ordered and recorded according to a subjective system of categorisation, often influenced by musical forms. Takahashi embraces qualities such as tempo, rhythm, movement and theme within her installations in response to the ‘visual music’ she perceives in each location. Her work is absorbing on both composite and incidental levels and demands the physical involvement of its audience. The gradual development of the work is ultimately experienced in the form of a ‘physical photograph’.

Tomoko Takahashi has carpeted the upper floor at Beaconsfield with a skip full of high-tech detritus. PCs, hi-fis, reel-to-reel tape recorders, electric fans, typewriters, a slide projector and masses of unidentified electric bits and bobs.... The rubbish has been cordoned off into zones bounded by an eccentric ground-plan and the ‘chaos’ is actually highly contrived. Articles are arrayed side by side and beaten-up old anglepoises strategically placed for illumination or to make dramatic shadow play. Sheets of paper may flap in the path of a fan but none actually blew around the space. And much of the abandoned hardware is still operating—albeit dysfunctionally. A tape reel whirs uselessly, a TV crackles, a slide projector flashes on and off; all contribute to a carefully orchestrated ambient noise that indicates nothing beyond its own redundancy. It’s as if the artist had breathed life into the junk, only to have it respond with senile ramblings.

Downstairs confirms Takahashi’s musical inclinations. The viewer is offered an acoustiguide and a tape of a short piano piece by composer Neill Quinton; a response to the space and Takahashi’s work.”

Press release; Mark Currah, review, Time Out, 3–10 December, 1997

62 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Tomoko Takahashi 63 Instantaneous MATTHEW CALEY, MICHELLE GRIFFITHS, STEPHEN NICHOLAS, TAL SHOSHAN, CLAIRE SHILLITOE, SOL SNELTVEDT 1998

Tal Shoshan, In Between, 1998, action with shaving foam, Beaconsfield, London SE11, Instantaneous, Saturday–Sunday 12–6pm, 17 January–8 February

Opposite: Michelle Griffiths, The Physics of Escapism (St Eulalia/Icarus), 1998, still action montage, Beaconsfield, London SE11, Instantaneous, Saturday–Sunday 12–6pm, 17 January–8 February

“Instantaneous, curated by David Crawforth, and Glean, curated by Naomi Siderfin, form[ed] an opposing pair, the first concerned with the moment, the second with process and thus duration.” Instantaneous focused on “the presence of short-lived and incidental occurrences within the practices of six artists. A series of new commissions explore[d] the potential meanings of these moments.

Mark Dean sets up relationships within and between classic film narratives through unconventional projections. Michelle Griffiths juxtaposes the mythological narratives of Icarus and St Eulalia in a still action montage. Moments represented relate to the beginning of one mythology and the finale of the other, physically placing the artist at the centre of a new hybrid myth. Visual artist Stephen Nicholas and poet Matthew Caley bring together sound, light and text in a multi-media installation that presents the viewer with strangely familiar and loaded imagery. Israeli artist Tal Shoshan uses the phenomena of disappearance in her live exploration of the elements of identity. Claire Shillito’s performance work questions assumptions about the nature of the audience/performer relationship. Employed by the gallery, Shillito will engage with every person entering the space, establishing a fiscal contract that entitles the public to membership of the on-going event. A video installation by Sol Sneltvedt explores the ‘success’ and ‘failure’ of electronic media in representing the subtle extremes of nature.”

Press release

64 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH PAGE TITLE 65 Glean Anna Best, Robert Beard, Keith Coventry, Tamsin Pender 1998

“Anna Best has been asked to take a specific local situation or set of circumstances as the raw material for her work. Rather than impose an artist’s idea upon the Lambeth Walk precinct, she has opened up an opportunity whereby the artist becomes a channel for other peoples’ ideas.... She finds herself part of a volatile social complex... she asks herself whether this activity in which she is engaging... can call itself ‘art’. She finds that people are encouraging her to ‘brighten the place up’ on a temporary basis and is saddened by the fact that this is all they expect of art.... She decides to hang soft mirror-balls in the precinct....1

Robert Beard’s varied career history includes forestry, fund-raising for the homeless and general building work. His interests include Buddhist philosophy and martial arts. This mixture... has produced an artist whose work, whilst using the preliminary material of sculpture (plaster) has no need of an object. Beard works against the idea of commodification....

Keith Coventry takes the urban environment as the raw material for Above: Tamsin Pender, Untitled, 1998, thread his work but... remains detached, picking his subject matter from the and weaving process, Beaconsfield, London, material objects and images which service the human element.... Crack SE11, Glean, Friday–Sunday, 12–6pm, 6–28, June pipes... kebab machines... or street furniture... are cast wholesale in the ultimate material of sculpture—bronze.... Opposite: Keith Coventry, Crack City, 1998, oil on canvas in progress, Beaconsfield, London, The appropriation of disregarded objects, found or given... has consistently SE11, Glean, Friday–Sunday, 12–6pm, 6–28, June contributed to the artistic language of Tamsin Pender... the artist adds a new dimension to the discarded by painstakingly working on it— recently in thread.... Pender’s subject is woven into the doing of it. The methodology suggests the next step as the artist combines conscious and unconscious processes to create new images....

Like gleaners, the artists in this exhibition largely make their work by utilising what is neglected or overlooked by others, piecing together diverse information.”

Naomi Siderfin, Glean, exhibition catalogue, London: Beaconsfield, 1998

Visionhire

Within a body of mostly commissioned work, Visionhire has the particular eccentricity of an unfunded and therefore uncontrolled project. It was 1 See Visionhire, 1998, pp 68–69. nourished by conversation with Naomi Siderfin as part of Glean. In

66 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH PAGE TITLE 67 many ways it encouraged my process of working, in that the gathering or gleaning, the research, was in itself a performance of sorts, which stressed the importance of context. My role as artist became more complex as the environment and the other people encountered or involved played a greater part.

In Visionhire ideas were kick-started by the response to my question: “What do you think Lambeth Walk needs, what can I do?”.... “Well I think you should brighten the place up.” Half tongue-in-cheek we made some soft mirror-balls to decorate the bridges and a local man, Elvis, took the part of the ‘mirror man’. Each day for a month he stood with a blackboard sign, dressed in silver, glittery costume, part pearly king and part demented protester (as seen in gold foil outside parliament). People were invited to write what they wanted to see changed in Lambeth Walk. The only people who wrote were locals; some offered to shoot us and some wrote: “We want more shops, trees, etc.”

Anna Best, Visionhire (detail), 1998, soft I set up a kind of gallery/drop-in/live scene-of-crime incident room, sculpture, mirror ball, Lambeth Walk, full of documents, gifts, history and paraphernalia in the vacant gas London, SE11, Glean, Friday–Sunday, 10– showroom opposite the Visionhire TV shop, next door to the Lambeth 6pm, 6–28, June Walk Partnership office with its regeneration proposals. “So what did it all add up to?”, some punters asked. I wanted to examine the cracks in the Opposite: Anna Best, Visonhire, 1998, man with facade of a place and created an abject and dismal mirroring, singularly placard, Lambeth Walk, London, SE11, Glean, unglorified in comparison with the Wimpey Barratt visions next door. At Friday–Sunday, 10–6pm, 6–28, June the same time I was referencing optimistic treatises on 1970s architecture and an unmaintained vision of a community precinct left to rack and ruin and shopped to developers. Five years later I made a project (Phil, 2003) just off Black Prince Road, also about the Council’s lack of maintenance in a community. But in 1998 the great ending for me was learning that an enormous developer takeover bid for this Vauxhall estate had failed and that tenants would now control their own properties on prime land south of the river and parliament. I thought of Visionhire as a discussion about the capitalist renting of visions; hopes being traded for profits, or something like that.

Anna Best

68 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH PAGE TITLE 69 70 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH PAGE TITLE 71 Estate the Ian Hinchliffe Retrospective ian hinchliffe 1998

“Ian Hinchliffe engages a model of reality which combines many areas of sensibility... the world of the music hall, the pantomime, the B-feature movie, the black and white TV drama, radio comedy and English comics, the world of aggressive psychotic fracture and the world of the pastoral... and the decency of uncorrupted people.

These contrasting areas meet in him and he uses them compulsively, sometimes cunningly, sometimes exquisitely, always dedicatedly, to Previous page: Estate preview event with pursue his purpose which is to damage bland, false and limited models Gerry Fitzgerald, Lol Coxhill, Ian Hinchliffe, of human possibility.... Naomi Siderfin, Beaconsfield, London, SE11, 30 October, 1998 He turns himself into a grotesque, deploying a strong gurning skill and avid pleasure in eccentric trophies which become garments and accessories—a Above: Ian Hinchliffe, Estate (detail),1998, broom is a plume, a powder puff or comb becomes a moustache.... His performances and installation, Beaconsfield, root conviction is that life is a painful and uncontrolled dilemma which it is London, SE11, 30 October–22 November, 1998 his mission to reveal....

Opposite: Ian Hinchliffe, Estate (detail of above The Ian Hinchliffe estate is expansive. He has been working as a performance image),1998, performances and installation, artist since the late 50s. His early work came out of the West Yorkshire jazz Beaconsfield, London, SE11, 30 October–22 scene (he plays piano, saxophone and clarinet).... His work was performed in November, 1998 pubs, clubs and on the street....

Most people... are unaware of the paintings, drawings and assemblages which inform the work. His oeuvre now finds a new relevance in the context of the new British art of the 90s....

Political conviction, stemming from a profound loyalty to his roots, ignites Hinchliffe’s work. Sometimes ‘astray between art and reality’ and largely unrecognised by the art establishment, this artist’s work has developed on an organic basis, independent of art school indoctrination....

The new commission—Estate—is placed in the context of Hinchliffe’s personal archive which demonstrates that his work has been (and is) his life.”

Jeff Nuttall, Estate, exhibition catalogue, London: Beaconsfield, 1998

72 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Ian Hinchliffe, Estate, 1998, performances and Classic installation, Beaconsfield, London, SE11,30 [rout], Pete Smith, O(rphan) d(rift>), Dianne Harris with Hex 1997 October–22 November, 1998

“[rout] is an alliance of young British composers, performers and conductors founded in 1995. The London-based contemporary music ensemble is committed to the performance of a new generation of contemporary British composers, in particular those as yet unrecognised by the music establishment, and is eager to perform in sites providing an alternative to the standard classical concert venue.... [rout] considers a positive social commitment to cultural development to be an essential part of its work and wished to contribute towards ending the relative isolation of new music in the contemporary arts.... Beaconsfield’s decision to platform the inaugural concert of... [rout] was made with the intention of exploring the parallels that traditionally exist between visual and aural practices both in form and content. The collaboration has been developed over a period of two years, aiming to radicalise the concrete form and, by inviting visual artists to respond to the music programme, to mix audiences in a new way....

Each part of Classic’s three part music programme is governed by a different aesthetic and juxtaposed with responsive visual works by Pete Smith, O(rphan) d(rift>) and Dianne Harris (with Hex), all of which have a common link in their use of video.... Technical Bodgirls, the multi-media collective O(rphan) d(rift>) favour the sonic over the visual and have devised a new randomised word-work to dovetail with the second group of spatially organised, ambient-minimal compositions by Cage, Cardew and Newland. The final part incorporates the differing neoclassical compositional approaches of Armstrong and Andriessen with Paul Whitty’s chaotic polyphonic play of musical line and surface. This eclecticism is amplified by Dianne Harris’ robotic sculpture incorporating a live mix of computer generated projections produced in conjunction with Hex who are more often experienced on the club scene.”

Leaflet

74 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Classic 75 Butterfly

Mikey Cuddihy, Don’t I Know Myself, 1998, Naomi asked me if I would make something for Cottage Industry. gesso, acrylic, paper on canvas The idea seemed to be based on the notion of artists (we were all women) who make their work domestically, or at any rate, not in a conventional studio situation.

Apart from a brief stint in a huge studio overlooking Mile End Park in 1997, I have always worked at home, admittedly in the biggest room in my small house; stripped of anything resembling comfort, it does have a studio feel about it­­—lots of cobwebs, paint on the floor, and a big plan chest. But the view overlooks a street, and houses opposite, with lacy curtains.

I immediately said “yes” to Naomi’s offer; at the same time, I found myself hoping that maybe something would intervene to prevent me having to deal with it—a small war perhaps, or an accident involving temporary paralysis? As time drew on, it seemed this wasn’t going to happen, and I became quite excited about the challenge, and involvement with the other artists.

How would I deal with the contrast between my crowded space at home and the cathedral-like dimensions of Beaconsfield? Each time I visited the space, I was surprised by it. Walking up the built-in staircase from the lower floor and confronted suddenly by that huge space—the wooden sloping floor and the tiny circle of window in the far-away wall, like a full moon, I was always taken aback, surprised at how enormous it all was.

I decided I would make my work about that contrast. I moved my plan chest, and anything against the walls into the middle of the studio. Then I lined the walls with a skin of Khadi Paper, reaching from the skirting boards to the ceiling. I spent a month, painting a doodled surface with blood coloured watercolour and a small brush, concentrating on small intimate areas and working my way along the wall, up as far as my hand could reach. Looking in my notebook from that time, I see that working on the piece gave me constant headaches—I felt stifled by its intensity. My back hurt. I developed dermatitis, for some reason, all over my hands, and I could only work for two-hour bursts.

I had no idea what the piece would look like until, with the help of David and Naomi, we finally unrolled it across the gallery walls—55ft

76 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Butterfly 77 Mikey Cuddihy, Jane Number One, 1998, gesso, by 9ft—rectangles/spaces where the windows had been. What acrylic, paper on canvas had covered four walls and hemmed me in now spanned two of Beaconsfield’s walls, reaching about a third of the way up. It was spacious and light. I noted that Naomi had hung an anchor from the ceiling, dangling over a rectangle of white on the floor and that Sonia had unfurled an enormous photograph, which hung on the outside of the building. Kate Bush wrote a beautiful story for the catalogue.

A couple of years later, Naomi and David asked me to have a one-person show of my paintings. Naomi came to see me in my studio (the rented one, away from home). I noted in my diary that we talked mostly about relationships, which was justified, as the paintings had fragments of love letters and shopping lists embedded in them. I noted (again) that I felt terrified and inadequate—daunted by the idea of that enormous space, and how would I fill it? I broke my ankle halfway through making the work (but that still left my hands free!). Even when I got the paintings into the gallery and leant them against the walls, they looked small, as if they wouldn’t quite hold their own. Somehow, through David and Naomi’s unswerving faith that everything would turn out well and their quiet attention to detail, by the time the show opened, the work was hung, the floor was swept and polished, the bar set up, and even a catalogue miraculously produced.

Later, for Chronic Epoch, I made a piece that seemed to fall somewhere between the earlier paper piece and the paintings. I used the same Khadi Paper, but this time, I enlarged the smallest doodle and some text with the name ‘Timoko’ scrawled across it (for some forgotten reason). I’d projected the image—ridiculously enlarged, and re-drew it, the ink falling into the surface of the paper, mimicking the fat distortion of the Xerox. David helped me pin the piece against the wall; the drawing fluttered there, like an enormous butterfly.

Mikey Cuddihy

78 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Butterfly 79 R.A.F. in Berlin

I am consistently irritated by art that slips into a type of lazy pornography and gets away with it as everyone averts their eyes. I could not accuse the Sensation artists of this, but felt that there might be a logical performative conclusion to some of the work in that seminal YBA exhibition. Notwithstanding, I am still slightly aghast when I remember what we dreamed up for the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin in 1998. Puritanism perverted.

Hayley Newman had invited Beaconsfield Artworks to contribute to Small Pleasures, a weekend of performance art she curated in conjunction with Sensation, on tour. Sensation: Young British Artists in the Saatchi Collection originated in 1997 from the Royal Academy of Art, London, curated by Norman Rosenthal and later toured to Berlin and New York, but was rejected by Australia, because of the controversial nature of many of the exhibits. The Small Pleasures weekend was designed as a parallel experience revealing young British performance artists who were not in the Saatchi Collection.

We advertised through the Berlin press and were rewarded by an exhibitionist couple that were in a relationship and occasionally ‘acted’ in adult movies. We installed a purple dome tent in a gallery within decent distance of Tracy Emin’s more famous embroidered version, Everyone I Ever Slept With, and, at scheduled intervals, our couple made noisy love inside the tent, lit from within by a powerful halogen torch. We personally heard throughout the museum and obliquely recalled Kristallnacht as well invigilated the performance (Randy as Fuck) in our guise as German as providing a metaphor for the state of our relationship at the time. museum staff. The third piece in the weekend trilogy was called Rise and Fall. From the It was impressive the way the museum was prepared to let us infiltrate its nearby State Theatre of the former GDR, we happened upon a dummy of security system. The converted railway station, Hamburger Bahnhof, is President Hoenecker, the final leader of East Germany. It was a gift. We on the eastern side of the former wall and the staff room was reminiscent hung him by the heels within sight of Mark Quinn’s suspended rubber self- of early James Bond film sets. We were issued with male and female portrait, No Visible Means of Escape. It was a mild riposte to the proliferation Above and opposite: BAW, R.A.F., 1999, live uniforms, shirts, ties, blazers, trousers, skirt and photo ID. I wore my of naturalistic depictions of the body abounding in Saatchi’s collection. actions for Small Pleasures-Junge Britische uniform with one deviation—knee length black boots. It took the artist Performance Art as part of Sensation, Kirsten Reynolds—who I knew quite well—20 minutes to recognise Naomi Siderfin Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, me on arrival at the museum. Having familiarised ourselves with the 16–17 January layout of the exhibition, we did a passable job of directing visitors. The job mostly involved standing around all weekend with folded arms, etc, but was animated a couple of times a day when we seated ourselves at opposite ends of one of the galleries with laptops on our knees and proceeded to engage in a digital gun fight (Random Automatic Fire). The sound could be

80 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Small Pleasures in Berlin 81 Syzygy—a time warp series at Beaconsfield O(rphan) D(rift>) vs CCRU with Pat Cardigan, John Cussans, Kodwo Eshun, Nick Land 1999

Left: O(rphan) D(rift>) vs CCRU, Meshed, 1999, DPS from Digital Unlife Catacomic

Opposite: O(rphan) D(rift>) vs CCRU, Syzygy (detail), 1999, projection and ritual, exact date unknown

Overleaf: O(rphan) D(rift>) vs CCRU, Meshed, 1999, DPS from Digital Unlife Catacomic

“a Time Warp series... a live game... a digital unlife event... hyperstition... sonic engineering... machine vision... fictional quantities... time sorcery... coincidence induction... tic machines... Y2K positive... a psychoactive situation... geotraumatics... spinal regression... hydrotonic demonic polyrhythm... liquid technology....

SYZYGY is a ‘Digital Unlife Event’ that takes place over five weekend evenings. Rather than a gallery style exhibition, SYZYGY is a members club—people pay for the drinks and the refreshments. These evening events are hosted by O(rphan) D(rift>) and the Ccru.

The multi-media collective O(rphan) D(rift>) present video, music and dance events which operate in the twilight zone between a contemporary digital world of avatars and earlier forms of ‘avatism’.

Ccru (Cybernetic Cultural Research Unit of Warwick University) have invented a calendar and written an alternative history of ritualistic practice. These anthropological fictions unfold over the event through readings and discussions and relate culturally to games in cyberspace as well as to the idea of a ‘new mediaevalism’, drawing heavily upon unorthodox ethnic religious practice.”

Press release

82 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH PAGE TITLE 83 84 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Syzygy 85 Field I–VI David Crawforth, Franko B, Ben Cockett and Naomi Siderfin, Mary Anne Francis, [rout], Prang and Anna Best, Fabienne Adéoud and John Russell 1999–2000

David Crawforth, Little Dancer (detail), 1999, A series of five high impact, low budget solo and duo exhibitions, Field bronze, Beaconsfield, London, SE11, Field I ran for a year from the autumn of 1999, starting with David Crawforth’s spectacular Little Dancer. (The title refers to the much loved bronze by Edgar Degas, the original Little Dancer aged 14). An immaculate bronze cast of a very large (but not impossible) cockroach set inside a perspex box, spot-lit, Crawforth’s version occupied the upper space for five and a half weeks. Self-sufficient, its impact derived from its perfect detail and the disjunction between that perfection and the nature of a giant cockroach. Other manifestations of Field included a self-cutting performance by Franko B and [rout], Prang and Anna Best resident at Beaconsfield for a week during which £5.00 bought entry to every event. An introductory session over tea was followed by a dance workshop, a day out in Buckinghamshire and [rout] performances that included works by Steve Reich, Paul Whitty and Thomas Pynchon. The [rout] installation incorporated Standing Waves, a work that deals with the natural acoustic properties of the space within which it is performed. For Field III, Modern, Ben Cockett installed a number of arte povera inspired sculptures with an oil painting upstairs while below Naomi Siderfin exhibited a series of unframed watercolours. Mary Anne Francis followed with Group Show; the mystifyingly beautiful exhibition guide quotes Jacques Derrida: “So what is one doing when one attributes shoes? When one gives or restitutes them? What is one doing when one attributes a painting or when one identifies a signatory?” The series ended with Fabienne Adéoud and John Russell: “There is nothing so profane to a man as an ugly woman. Eroticism is to do with destroying or defiling beauty and if a woman is ugly the man cannot contrast the beauty of her face with the ugliness of her genitals.”

Leaflets

86 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH PAGE TITLE 87 Earthshaker BAW 2000

BAW, Earthshaker, 2000, synthetic sound and spoken word performance, 25 October 2001, curated by Tracey Warr for Oxford Brookes University

Opposite: BAW, Earthshaker, 2000, synthetic sound and spoken word performance, 18 June 2000, commissioned by Svein Flygari Johannsen for Stavanger Biennial, Norway

Oil comes from beneath the earth’s surface, deeper than the sea, somewhere near the tectonic plates overlaid to move like the spinal column— most of the time efficaciously but sometimes violently with disastrous consequences. Apparently, the intensity of an earthquake is measured by its effects on people, human structures and the natural environment. These associations were the bedrock for Earthshaker, which generated a spectrum of sound frequencies in performance—some inaudible.

Stavanger is the oil capital of Norway and our first performance of Earthshaker took place on an oil rig. The piece required a huge, top quality sound system with a minimum 10,000 volume capacity to generate a combination of sub-frequencies, improvised sound composition and spoken word. Earthshaker used sound-waves to create a fiction performing in the same way as a mirage. Rather than just mimicking a destructive force of nature, we wanted this sound-image to evoke a synthetic, transformative moment: “the metamorphic moment when the soul is irreversibly shaken” (we said). “For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows.” Mark 13:8, I recited. Later, this somewhat prescient piece was performed post-9/11 as part of a conference at Oxford Brookes University, in a sea of newspapers reporting on the international crisis. It was also the moment when Robert Maxwell’s media empire crumbled. Other iterations in 2001 were for Café Gallery Projects, London at the (then) semi-derelict Dilston Grove annexe and for the UKS Biennial in Oslo.

Naomi Siderfin

88 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH PAGE TITLE 89 The Nosepaint-BeaconsfieldPapertrail DESIGNED BY DAMIAN JACQUES, DAVID CRAWFORTH AND NAOMI SIDERFIN 1991–2000

Montage of pages from The Nosepaint- Beaconsfield Papertrail 1991–2000, published in a limited edition of 200 copies for London 1990–2000, Century City: Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis, Tate Modern, London, January, 2001

90 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH PAGE TITLE 91 Fragmens sur les Institutions Républicaines IV Shane Cullen 2001 (loaned from Irish Museum of Modern Art)

Shane Cullen, Fragmens sur les Institutions “In the monumental work Fragmens sur les Institutions Républicaines IV Républicaines IV, 1993–1997, enamel paint Cullen has represented texts... derived from the writings produced by on board, installation view at Beaconsfield, Republican prisoners during the 1981 Hunger Strike. These texts, called London, SE11, loaned by Irish Museum of ‘comms’, were secret messages written on cigarette-papers, wrapped Modern Art, Dublin in plastic film and carried in and out of the prisons concealed in bodily orifices.... Cullen has painstakingly hand-painted these texts in white Boldoni typeface against a green ground, in neat newspaper formations on a series of eight-foot high styrofoam panels....

The ‘comms’... were produced... by prisoners, in the process of starving themselves to death in pursuit of political status.... In order to establish the legitimacy of the republican military campaign and to challenge the policy of criminalisation adopted by the British Government, these prisoners, repeating a strategy with a long history in Irish politics and mythology, refused food until they died.

This work... is marked by the trace of a particular body, the body of the painter. It is further marked by absent bodies, bodies reduced, erased and superceded by text. It is marked by their words, the words of dead men negotiating the terms and conditions of their death.... ‘He is fully aware of exactly what this hunger strike means...’. Cullen enables a profound insight into the failure to know fully the meanings of any loss, of any death, and the conceit of believing we may know the meaning of our own death. This is not to forego the desire to know or the wish to control meaning. Cullen in layering the strategies of representation necessitates that the viewer consider the strategies of reading and of viewing in their own right.”

Liam Kelly ed, Shane Cullen, Fragmens sur les Institutions Républicaines IV, Orchard Gallery, 1997

92 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Fragmens sur les institutions républicaines IV 93 Element BAW 2001

Endemic tensions between Oslo and the wild north fed our imaginations. Ringleaders of the Kautokeino uprising of 1852 were decapitated in Alta (the farthest city north on Earth) and one of the skulls kept at the University of Oslo until 1996. No hydroelectric plant met with more opposition than the Alta power plant in the 1970s and 80s, the most comprehensive case of civil disobedience in post-war Norwegian history, and the concrete dam of Altaelva and the river itself has become a symbol of the fight against interference in the environment and for the rights of the Saami. Close to the river a maker of concrete products, Jaro As, is a key employer in the region. A religious meeting place of the late Stone Age is now a UNESCO world heritage site, with the museum sitting amongst ancient rock paintings bearing testimony to an animistic perception that still runs through the shamanic culture of the indigenous people.

May 2001: “We now propose to site a sound beacon in the vicinity of the museum. We would like to construct our totem out of industrial concrete BAW, Element I (details), 2001, concrete, tubing, like that used for pipe-work infrastructures. The concrete contrasts glass, synthetic sound, commissioned by UKS well with the ancient rock and is the contemporary material from which Biennial and Alta Museum, Norway the dam is constructed.... The concrete base will have a speaker with a large diameter set into it. This powerful speaker will be wired into a mains Pages 96–97: BAW, Element, 2001, installation power supply (probably the museum). The speaker wire would need to be view, concrete, glass, synthetic sound, heavy duty and would run exposed (rather than disguised) as part of the commissioned by UKS Biennial and Alta image. The speaker would send amplified sound out through the concrete Museum, Norway pipe, creating an extremely powerful sound caused by the concrete tube resonating. All electronics (CD player, amplifier, sound synthesiser) can be housed under cover—in the museum or an outbuilding... sound can be either pre-recorded on CD or generated live or a mixture of both... the beacon will symbolically reference means of communication from Stone Age Norway to the present day where modern power is generated by the dam.... Two glass skulls will be placed at the base of the beacon.”

A significant part of the budget went into commissioning a special Element sound-machine with the ability to mimic the forces of nature— rain, wind, thunder etc. Programmed around traditional rhythms of the Saami drum, the soundscape was cemented by monotone beats and changed daily. Element was a sequel to Earthshaker, 2000, and the Element machine came out of storage for Diluvial, 2011, when BAW collaborated with Bruce Gilbert.

Naomi Siderfin

94 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH PAGE TITLE 95 96 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH PAGE TITLE 97 Shozo Shimamoto 2001

Left: Shozo Shimamoto, solo exhibition, performance with fabric dye on cashmere, Beaconsfield, London, SE11, 19 October, 2001

Shozo Shimamoto, solo exhibition, performance with fabric dye on cashmere, Beaconsfield, London, SE11, 28 October, 2001

Shimamoto, the first member of the Gutai Art Association, developed his unique approach to painting through traditional eastern calligraphy and was especially influenced by the work of the Zen priest, Nantembo (d 1926).1 When he began to paint, the artist visited Jiro Yoshihara, founder of the Art Association and asked to be his number one student. The condition was: “Only if you are to create paintings that no one has ever attempted before”.... As a result, he wrote, “I made a vow not to use a paintbrush, the most important implement for painting well. It was not a way to display eccentricity but a difficult path to take— like a religious practice.... I will take the opportunity of being invited to make an ambitious exhibition in London, to make work by dropping colour whilst being suspended from the ceiling. I will be using a tool devised by my student/artist, Loco. At first glance, this may seem like a frivolous method of production. My challenge, then, will be to find ways of discovering beauty, which is both new and serious in content, through deliberate use of a seemingly frivolous production method. My work has often been denounced as shallow because of this approach. Despite such denunciations, my attitude has been to consistently flout this criticism, as a path to creating new art that has not been done before.”

Shozo Shimamoto, exhibition catalogue, London: Beaconsfield, 2001 1 The Gutai Manifesto was first proclaimed October, 1956

98 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Shozo Shimamoto 99 The Agreement Shane Cullen, The Agreement in progress, 2001, digital etching by Fire, Dublin. Shane Cullen 2002

“ We, the participants in the multi-party negotiations, believe that the agreement we have negotiated offers a truly historic opportunity for a new beginning....”

So begins the text of the Good Friday or Belfast Agreement—the British- Irish peace treaty signed in 1998 after protracted multi-party negotiations. The crafting of this three-way agreement is internationally regarded as a model peace process. In June 2000, Palestinian and Israeli politicians, unable to convene on their own troubled territory, met in England to learn from the experiences of community leaders from Northern Ireland. In much the same way, Northern Irish politicians, deadlocked in the negotiations, travelled to South Africa to learn from post-apartheid politics. Six years on from Good Friday 1998, the document signed that day, for all the criticism it has attracted, is the mechanism which sustains a fragile equilibrium in Northern Ireland.

The Agreement is a project in three parts: it is the recently commissioned experience of creating socially engaged art projects to Cullen’s original sculptural work by Dublin based artist, Shane Cullen, the extended tour conception for a commemorative sculpture. The re-presentation of existing Shane Cullen, The Agreement (details), 2002, and exhibition of the sculpture in conjunction with public discussions and text has been central to Shane Cullen’s work over the years. Whether 19m recycled PVC faced with white virgin PVC a publication which will extend the debate. The project is being realised using seventeenth-century Gaelic (Parliament na mBan, 1992) or twentieth- spray painted, Beaconsfield, London, SE11, 2004 in an unprecedented partnership through public funds from England, the century English (Fragmens sur les Institutions Républicaines IV, 1997), the work Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland and ever expanding support can be interpreted and absorbed on numerous levels. Unlike previous from a variety of organisations in all three regions. The commission, documents Cullen has employed, the text of the Good Friday Agreement exhibition and analysis of The Agreement constitutes a cumulative process has been widely distributed. The peace process stemming from the 1993 wherein the response of the audience completes the work. Staging the Downing Street Declaration, heralding inclusive political talks on the work in key cities in England, Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic in future of Northern Ireland, was keenly followed as a media event by the close succession, the project provides a context for reflecting upon moral peoples of Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, while in England as well as aesthetic issues. the same agreement had minimal impact on the general public. Prior to referendums in both the Republic and North of Ireland, leaflets detailing The sculptural work currently on display within the walls of Kilkenny the full text of the proposed agreement were distributed to commemorate Castle, presents the full text of the Good Friday or Belfast Agreement in a the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 as a way of recovering a potentially clear and comprehensible manner on 55 panels measuring 67 metres in inaccessible legal document for public consumption. length. Technically innovative, the 11,500 words have been mechanically routed into high-density polyurethane using advanced digital technology. Beaconsfield’s proposal was to animate the sculpture by creating a public dialogue around an extended tour in the UK, Ireland and USA and The work has been commissioned by the London-based, artist-led eventually to document this live encounter between politics and art. The organisation Beaconsfield. Beaconsfield’s collaborative relationship with focus has been on engaging with the paradox of, on the one hand, the Shane Cullen began in 2000 after an acquaintance since 1993. Dubbing monumental aspiration of the 56 panels and, on the other, the mercurial themselves ‘the creative team’ Shane Cullen, David Crawforth and Naomi manner in which the emphasis of the text changes with each new context Siderfin have developed The Agreement together: Beaconsfield bringing their in which the sculpture is presented.

100 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH The Agreement 101 by addressing pressing cultural issues in an unprecedented symposium—The Future of Our Culture, June 2004—with members of the artistic community. The Kilkenny context enables the project to breathe in a new way. Presented as part of an international arts festival, it allows the viewer to consider the sculpture first and foremost as a work of art. The work as a concept is interesting but cannot replace or anticipate the primary experience of seeing and feeling the visual artwork itself. Even the most sceptical individuals have been, despite themselves, impressed by the physical experience of the piece and had their preconceived political notions overturned. Historic Kilkenny Castle provides a poignant setting for the piece. It is striking that the Statutes of Kilkenny, enacted in 1366 by English settlers, were effectively a model for an apartheid system; the Good Friday Agreement is seen as an international model for conflict resolution—a template for peace and reconciliation.

The final stage of the project is to produce a reflective publication. The proposed book is intended to be a stand-alone document which presents material developed from various discussions and events catalysed by the exhibition of The Agreement—the sculpture. It is intended to provide insights into the complexities of the peace process in Northern Ireland and at the same time raise a discussion about the efficacy of cultural strategies that engage with significant issues of the day. The publication will propose a political role for art in a democratic society and in an age of ‘conflict resolution’.

The Agreement is a cross-border partnership produced by Beaconsfield (London) supported by the Arts Councils of England, the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland, the Agreed Ireland Forum (London), Awards for All (Belfast), the British Council, Brookfield Business Centre (Belfast), DHL International, City Arts Centre (Dublin), the Cultural Relations Committee (Dublin), Fire Design (Dublin), Firestation Artists Studios (Dublin), Flax Art Studios and Flax Trust (Belfast), Imagine Belfast 2008, Shane Cullen, The Agreement (detail), 2002, The extent to which the meaning of the work shifts according to the cultural Orchard Gallery (Derry), Project (Dublin), University of Ulster (Belfast) 19m recycled PVC faced with white virgin and political climate in which it is viewed has been demonstrated as the and Visiting Arts (London). PVC spray painted, exhibited offsite for Project, tour progresses. The Dublin forum Reading the Agreement, October 2002, Dublin, 2002 facilitated a range of responses. Leading Irish politicians reflected upon the “What cannot be said, above all must not be silenced, but written.” negotiating process and its implications for change amid growing fears of a Jacques Derrida political crisis and art theorists debated the implications of Making Art in Public. The Belfast Colloquium, March 2003, provided a opportunity to Naomi Siderfin, Exhibition catalogue, Kilkenny Arts Festival, July 2004 look closely at the ‘creative ambiguity’ of both the artwork and its subjects. In London, cultural luminaries discussed the Politics of Art in the Palace of Westminster and politicians (including the architect of the Good Friday Agreement, John Hume) discussed the Art of Politics in Beaconsfield’s gallery in Vauxhall, against the background of a suspended Northern Ireland Assembly, May 2003. In Portadown, the town where sectarian feeling famously reaches an annual peak during the Marching Season, politicians from every significant party in Northern Ireland charted unfamiliar territory

102 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH The Agreement 103 Voices from the Id john isaacs 2002

John Isaacs, Voices from the Id (details), 2002, multi-media installation, Beaconsfield, London, SE11

“Isaacs’ engaging, large-scale installation, a trailer-trash mise-en-scène, is evidently shot through with wit and humour.

Within one half of a wooden construction, complete with stalagmite- shaped plastic rock formations, lies a dark, dank-looking cave. This leads on to a living room in which beer cans, cigarette butts and other debris overspill on a coffee table, video tapes crowd messily on shelves and general squalor rules. Three large TV sets offer compelling images as tales of failed relationships, childhood abuses and other human baggage are recounted by dejected individuals. The raw and over- wrought emotions played out are scenes from the daytime staple of confessional TV: Esther, Montel Williams, Trish and Oprah.... Isaacs’ allusion to Plato’s Cave, in which shadows are mistaken for reality, is a pointed reminder that a glut of sentiment doesn’t necessarily bear relation to genuine emotion. But it’s not the didacticism of Isaacs’ work that appeals, rather the intelligently light-hearted way it is realised.”

Fisun Güner, “Another fine mess”, Metro, 2002

104 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Voices from the Id 105 Archangel of Seven Seas Markus Copper 2002

Markus Copper, Rose Garten, 2002, installation view, oil drums, hydraulics, sound, Beaconsfield, London, SE11

Opposite: Markus Copper, Archangel of Seven Seas, 1998, installation view, recycled wooden organ pipes, steel, sound, Beaconsfield, London, SE11, loaned by the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki

“The works of Markus Copper exist as obsolete frameworks still in the throes of functionality. Referencing the building blocks of nature and the heavy industrial techniques of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, he creates intricate mechanical assemblages that mix superstition, politics and suppression with visual metaphors for enlightenment, evolution and science.”

Archangel of Seven Seas, for which Copper had won the 1999 Scandinavian Ars Fennica prize, was lent to Beaconsfield by Helsinki’s Kiasma. A fantastic, obsessively complex, hand-crafted rendering of a whale’s skeleton in wood, constructed with church organ pipes, its exposed innards formed electronic and pneumatic networks driving the sub-sonic tones that it emitted from its cavernous, unknowable interior. Rose Garten, inspired by nautical minefields, consisted of five barrels that created pressure waves, emitting a bass sound booming dramatically through the darkness of the Arch, where it was exhibited for the first time.

Press release

106 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH PAGE TITLE 107 We’re spending 4 weeks at Beaconsfield, so let’s hope everything goes OK Part 4 (nobleandsilver), 2002

(nobleandsilver), We’re spending 4 weeks at “On leaving Art College, Kim Noble and Stuart Silver... achieved a (nobleandsilver), We’re spending 4 weeks at which artist and artist, artist and visitor come face to face, repeatedly, Beaconsfield, so let’s hope everything goes collaborative coup by turning their attention to the formal structures of Beaconsfield, so let’s hope everything goes if obliquely. It’s about the communication between individuals OK Part 4 (detail), 2002, Beaconsfield, theatre, television, radio, and more specifically, comedy. OK Part 4 (detail), 2002, Beaconsfield, who have little choice but to hold each other in mutual respect/ London, SE11 London, SE11 antagonism.... There’s an acknowledgement that objects and space Buzzed inside the premises, I find myself standing in a space the size mediate relationships between people, making those relationships of a lift.... A uniformed woman escorts me to a desk where another tolerable, if not exactly comfortable.” official asks me to write my details on an index card and to come up with a £1 entrance fee.... (I feel a bit like a Kafka protagonist).... Duncan McLaren, review in Contemporary I’m asked to follow my guide up the stairs.... The room is dark.... I’m dutifully holding the sound system that was handed to me when I came into the darkened room.... Downstairs again, I watch a video in which (nobleandsilver) are giving a quick tour of what’s on at various galleries.... A second uniformed female tells me that the show continues behind me and indicates a door.... I discover that in the tiny space—a disabled toilet—is a woman playing a violin. Live!... In the gents I stand at the urinal. A sound-piece begins ‘Stop what you’re doing and think about where you are....’ So I do that. I’m in a show in

108 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH We’re spending 4 weeks at Beaconsfield, so let’s hope everything goes OK 109 Engineer Parts One to Six GEORGINA BATTY, SUSAN COLLIS, Laura Ford, CARINA DIEPENS, KERRY STUART, KATIE BARLOw 2003–2004

Left: Georgina Batty (detail), 2003, plywood This year-long, cumulative, six-part manifestation was predicated on architectural intervention, Beaconsfield, transformation: the familiar was to be rendered strange, disquieting, London, SE11, Engineer Part One destabilising. This was literally so for those trying to negotiate Georgina Batty’s ramp, which led up to the oculus on the back wall. The view that Above: Laura Ford (detail), Wreckers, it offered turned out to be disappointingly mundane: the point was the 2004, Soft Sculptures with Georgina Batty, journey taken to reach it. Laura Ford, in the space immediately below intervention, Beaconsfield, London, SE11, and Carina Diepens, on the ground floor, both used soft sculpture, an Engineer Part Three inherently discomfiting medium, to make groups of figures that suggested Pages 112–113: Carina Diepens (detail), 2004, intense, unknowable malignity, expressed through unidentifiable activities. living sculptures, Beaconsfield, London, SE11, In a parallel mode, Susan Collis sought to ruin immaculate surfaces Engineer Part Four through sleight of hand. In the Arch Kerry Stuart based a performing Blackbird—“a sculptural work animated by human performers playing out rituals of loss and desire”.

Press release

110 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Engineer 111 112 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH PAGE TITLE 113 Above: Katie Barlow, Visit Palestine, 2004, video still, Beaconsfield, London, SE11, Engineer Part Six

Right: Susan Collis (detail), 2003, PVC Paint ring veneer, Beaconsfield, London, SE11, Engineer Part Two

Opposite: Kerry Stewart (detail), 2004, actor, feathers, Beaconsfield, London, SE11, Engineer Part Five

114 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH PAGE TITLE 115 Moral Plinth VARIOUS ARTISTS, 2004

Naomi Siderfin and participants, “A microphone, an audio line input, a video projector, a soapbox for Suffer Little Children, 2004, performance free speech available to anybody. Beaconsfield invites you to make a and workshop, Beaconsfield, London, SE11, statement on the Moral Plinth. Moral Plinth The inputs allow pre-recorded and live audio feeds, video and Opposite: Naomi Siderfin, Suffer Little Children, live speech. For multiple audio inputs it is advisable to bring an audio 2004, performance, Beaconsfield, London, mixer, additional microphones and instruments. All contributions will SE11, Moral Plinth be recorded and archived.

The views expressed on the Moral Plinth are not necessarily the views of the organiser. Beaconsfield reserves the right to alter the schedule where necessary and to halt material that may cause offence.”

Leaflet

116 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH PAGE TITLE 117 Lightsilver Peter Collis, Chris Cornish, Mark Dean, Mattias Härenstam, susan pui san lok, Chiara Pirito, Zineb Sedira, João Seguro, Semiconductor 2005

“Lightsilver explores the physical, conceptual and historical impact of the landscape tradition on the ideas of contemporary artists. An evolving montage of projections links the cinematic tradition of vista-making with the metaphoric potential of an age-old genre—the appearance of that portion of land which the eye can view at once. Territory that has been conventionally explored through other mediums is here broadly extended to the moving image as a result of the digital revolution.

Nine diverse artists—Algerian, British, Chinese, Italian, Norwegian and Portuguese—rotate new commissions across three spaces: each fresh work entering the sequence on one screen before proceeding to the next. The impact of every piece shifts with the new environment, as it forms a triptych of montaged space with other artworks within a rotating exhibition structure of eleven weeks.

Mark Dean launches the Lightsilver sequence with three new works on all three screens, preparing the way for an exploration of the ways in which we understand the term ‘landscape’.... Peter Collis presents Tide shot with a 35mm slow motion camera on Boxing Day morning 2004, without knowledge of the imminent Tsunami.... Chiara Pirito creates a ‘living’ painting changing with the flow of time. Chris Cornish combines computer driven environments with the pathos of nature. susan pui san lok explores themes of nostalgia and aspiration through the reinterpretation of a... cultural anchor for displaced Chinese migrants. Mattias Härenstam takes a camera... to discover a post-tell utopian feeling of lost collectivity. Left: Mark Dean, Rag Doll (version), 2005, João Seguro reconsiders the notion of collective memory.... Zineb Sedira single-screen projection, video still, Lightsilver clandestinely films the Port of Algiers. Semiconductor present fictional documentaries, created through many processes of digital animation.” From top: susan pui san lok, Golden (Vistas), 2005, single- Press release screen projection, video still, Lightsilver

Semi-conductor, Lightsilver, 2005, single-screen projection, video still, Lightsilver

Zineb Sedira, And the Road Goes On..., 2005, single-screen projection, video still, Lightsilver

118 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Lightsilver 119 Economy 1, 2, 3 Carl Michael von Hausswolff 2005

Carl Michael Von Hausswolff, Meths Bar, 2005, installation view, methylated spirits, light bulbs, Beaconsfield, London, SE11, Economy 1, 2, 3

Opposite: Carl Michael Von Hausswolff, Alamut (detail), 2005, single-screen video projection, oculus with red light filter, sound recording, photographs, Beaconsfield, London, SE11, Economy 1, 2, 3

Carl Michael Von Hausswolff, Alamut, 2005, installation view, single-screen video projection, oculus with red light filter, sound recording, photographs, Beaconsfield, London, SE11, Economy 1, 2, 3 “Carl Michael von Hausswolff‘s triptych for Beaconsfield is a juxtaposition of new and historic works, incorporating photography, film, sound, light and olfactory sensation.

Hausswolff’s work for this, his first comprehensive exhibition in the UK, focuses on the mystique of remote and abandoned habitations. Alamut, in northern Iran, provides inspiration for Beaconsfield’s new commission and is complemented by existing works including Hashima, Japan, 2002, a haunting film made with Thomas Nordanstad, documenting Japan’s tiny ‘Battleship Island’ abandoned in the East China Sea, and Thinner Bar (Italian), 1998–2003. The three installations... reflect von Hausswolff’s preoccupations and speak of control and imprisonment, death and violation. This body of work mourns the ruthless exploitation endemic to the daily plundering of world resources, the ultimate desolation of our natural habitat and the subsequent impoverishment of human expectation.”

Press release

120 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Economy 1, 2, 3 121 CHRONIC EPOCH Eija-Liisa Ahtila, BAW, Anna Best, Susan Collis, Keith Coventry, Mikey Cuddihy, Shane Cullen, Robert Ellis, Bruce Gilbert, Carl Michael von Hausswolff and Thomas Nordanstad, John Isaacs, Hayley Newman, (nobleandsilver), Bob and Roberta Smith, Kerry Stewart, Tomoko Takahashi 2005

Opposite left: Exhibition view showing “Chronic Epoch marks Beaconsfield’s tenth anniversary and is a Tomoko Takahashi, collaged toilet; Bob and signature exhibition that includes painting, film, performance and Roberta Smith, Hiding Places, 2005, prints sculpture by just a few of the artists we’ve worked with over ten years. as wallpaper, Beaconsfield, London, SE11, Chronic Epoch The exhibition is animated by a programme of performance, talks and screenings presented by: Katie Barlow, David Cunningham/Brad Butler/Karen Mirza, Mark Dean, Richard Dedomenici, Svein Flygari Opposite right: Exhibition view showing Mikey Johansen, Bruce Gilchrist, Lucy Gunning, Matt Hale, Ian Hinchliffe, Cuddihy, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, John Melanie Keen, Tamsin Pender, Andrew Renton, Monica Ross, Eric Isaacs, Kerry Stewart, BAW, Beaconsfield, Rosoman, [rout], Zineb Sedira, Anya Stonelake, Dafna Talmor/Joe London, SE11, Chronic Epoch Walsh and Aaron Williamson.” Opposite below: Exhibition view showing Eija- Liisa Ahtila, Bruce Gilbert, BAW, Beaconsfield, “Entering the upper space, I can’t help feeling I’ve stumbled onto London, SE11, Chronic Epoch a stage set.... Suspended from the ceiling, Kerry Stewart’s Mull of Kintyre and Blackbird—huge hybrid bird/blackbird costume/sculptures.... Pages 124–125: Tomoko Takahashi, collaged John Isaacs’ grisly Today I started loving you again—a waxy severed leg in toilet, 2005, installation view, newspaper a cowboy boot, complete with human hair, sits nonchalantly in the clippings, handwritten text, Beaconsfield, middle of the steps bisecting the room, making me wonder whether London, SE11, Chronic Epoch the birds had anything to do with it.... Performance is this space’s mortar—Charlie Chaplin allegedly attended the ragged school that formerly occupied the gallery.

In (nobleandsilver)’s Living History a single line LED sign strictly instructs me to ‘queue here’.... Rounding the corner I’m confronted with a monitor.... A film of a very frail, elderly lady in bed, moving intermittently... it’s all part of (nobleandsilver)’s self-proclaimed ‘Award winning, critically acclaimed multi-media double act’....”

“Bob and Roberta Smith dominate the lower space.... Wipe-clean chequered tablecloths make it feel like a tearoom in a church crypt, but then there’s all the concrete—in bowls, saucepans, cups, ice cream cornets... a sort of fossilised Paul McCarthy performance.

In the arch space, Hayley Newman has created Woodshed, a chunky, raw wooden two-storey proscenium arch.... From the top there’s a rewarding view of Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s melancholic and slightly surreal Ground Control... a girl repeatedly lies down in a filthy puddle of rainwater.... This is a theme park of a show, featuring all of the best bits: the thrills, the chills and even refreshments, but unlike a theme park I didn’t leave feeling even slightly ripped off.”

Press release; Susie Clark, review; http://www.leisurecentre.org.uk

122 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Chronic Epoch 123 124 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH PAGE TITLE 125 Woodshed

Woodshed was a two-storey house-frame constructed from pine and installed to obstruct the entrance to the railway arch space. Woodshedding is an American term used by musicians to describe the arduous task of

Hayley Newman, Woodshed, 2005, installation practising until something is right. A woodshed is also a place that could view, Beaconsfield, London, SE11, Chronic Epoch be perceived as dark and unwelcoming. Functioning as both an installation and performance-space, Woodshed was occasionally furnished with Opposite: David Crawforth and Hayley performances and installations by invited artists. Amongst others Ian Newman, Monkey Diner, 2005, performance, Hinchliffe, Richard Dedomenici, Bruce Gilchrist, Monica Ross, David Beaconsfield, London, SE11, Chronic Epoch Crawforth and myself performed there.

Monica Ross performed one of the most moving works, rightsrepeated, when she recited, from memory, the United Declaration of Human Rights. Within the bare open-framed two-storey structure her work spoke of human rights both to a home and within a home.

Hayley Newman

126 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Greenwich Degree Zero ROD DICKINSON, TOM MCCARTHY 2006

Greenwich Degree Zero, Rod Dickinson and Tom McCarthy’s first public collaboration, developed themes and concerns that both artists had been pursuing individually for some time. The link between mediation, belief and propaganda had been explored by both. Dickinson for years had been documenting articles reporting the ‘origins’ of crop circles that he himself had made, and had recently had the political sermons of cult-leader Jim Jones re-enacted before a live audience. McCarthy had been circulating manifestos and proclamations purporting to represent Rod Dickinson & Tom McCarthy, Greenwich an avant-garde organisation, the International Necronautical Society, Degree Zero, 2006, installation views, mixed- and had even managed to infiltrate the BBC website and insert its media installation, Beaconsfield, London, SE11 propaganda in its own source code. The issue of the relationship between the traumatic ‘event’ and its (artificial) repetition was also central to the work of both, as witnessed by the obsessive reconstructions carried out by the traumatised protagonist of McCarthy’s novel Remainder, or Dickinson’s meticulous reproduction of Stanley Milgram’s ‘Obedience to Authority’ experiment, itself originally a simulation that replayed structures of power and compliance that characterised the Holocaust.

Greenwich Degree Zero grew out of a series of discussions between the two artists about these themes—and, in particular, about the work of modernist novelist Joseph Conrad. In the piece, Dickinson and McCarthy reconstructed media reports and other documents pertaining to an event that took place on the First Meridian line in London’s Greenwich Park, the degree zero of time itself. On February 15 1894, a French anarchist named Martial Bourdin was killed carrying a bomb towards the Royal Observatory, providing Conrad with the plot of his novel The Secret Agent. While it was generally assumed that the Observatory had been his target, his intention and motivation were never fully established. By tweaking their documents to make them state as a historical fact that Bourdin did indeed destroy the building, and producing film footage of its fiery demise, Dickinson and McCarthy carried the event beyond its zero point, into a zone where mediation becomes truth and vice versa, and where objects take on a fetish-like, seemingly authentic status even as they become entirely fictive artefacts—a zone whose absurd, contradictory logic reproduces that governing public life and media in general.

Rod Dickinson and Tom McCarthy

128 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH PAGE TITLE 129 Golden (Lessons) Chorus’ and ‘Mobile Ballroom’ experiments in nostalgia and engineered spontaneity, that take inspiration from the ‘mobile clubbing’ phenomenon Susan Pui San Lok 2006 and the idea of the ‘spontaneous musical number’.”

“Opening events took the form of a trialogue between Sonya Boyce, Irit Rogoff and Naomi Siderfin chaired by Joanne Morra, for which susan pui san lok provided a Cantonese translation; a singing lesson during susan pui san lok, Mobile Ballroom, 2006, “Ballroom and song are recurring motifs in Golden (Lessons), a research which participants learned and performed “Golden”—an interlude for flashmob, Vauxhall, London, SE11, Golden residency that expands on susan pui san lok’s ongoing project, Golden, voices and “Golden Hour”, when ballroom tunes and 60s Cantopop (Lessons), 10, November exploring themes of nostalgia, cultivation and aspiration in diaspora.... Lessons records were played.” is... punctuated by a series of on- and off-site events and interventions. Visitors are invited to participate as students and performers of song and Press release; leaflet dance; as part of an impromptu chorus led by composer Matt Davidson, or improvised ‘lessons’ led by dancer/choreographers Jenevieve Chang and Annie Pui Ling Lok. Enthusiasts are welcome to join the ‘Mobile

130 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Golden (Lessons) 131 Hibernator Prince of the Petrified Forest London Fieldworks (Bruce Gilchrist, Jo Joelson) 2007

“Stranded on its green-screen podium, an equally high tech hybrid rests, until pulled from sleep by digital sensors—driven by light readings taken from the porthole window... Operating in real time, the solar activated animatronic is the central character of a film in progress, Hibernator: Prince of the Petrified Forest....

[It] draws inspiration from Felix Salten’s anthropomorphic novel Bambi: A Life in the Woods, first published in 1928 and the source also for Walt Disney’s iconic 1942 animated feature film Bambi.... London Fieldworks, Hibernator, 2007, installation view, green screen film studio, This most recent princely apparition has been brought into being through animatronic, Beaconsfield, London, SE11 the combined expertise of specialists in prosthetics—Paul and Laura Carey—and biomimetics—Matthew Walker.... Opposite: London Fieldworks, Hibernator (detail), 2007, animatronic, Beaconsfield, The chimera’s head has ground-breaking potential as a moving human London, SE11 model for its subcutaneous movement and colouration. The silicone mask has been cast from a collaborative sculptural portrait of Walt Disney....

The hibernating chimera, fittingly, as the star of the show, enters the action as a fully functioning character late in the production schedule. His script has already been written, his score conceptualised and his habitat designed.

The narrative... charts a speculative journey for a disturbed and disturbing alter ego ascribed to the all-American dream-weaver....

From animal hibernation patterns there is a fast link to human hibernation experiments—through the pseudo-science of cryonics and recent artificial induction of suspended animation in rodents.... The motif of a life suspended rather than ended, in the hope of technological reincarnation, is perfectly attuned to the research interests of Gilchrist and Joelson....

The plethora of ideas, influences and co-conspirators that lurk behind Hibernator—was stimulated... by an invitation to develop a work with Beaconsfield.... Once his connection to light is severed, Hexer will return to slumber....”

Naomi Siderfin, Hibernator, exhibition catalogue, London: Beaconsfield, 2007

132 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH PAGE TITLE 133 Soundtrap 1 and II Forest Volume Iv Daniel Figgis 2006/leafcutter JOHN 2007 BAW, Karl Burke, Mark Dean, Bruce Gilbert, Leafcutter John, Fergus Kelly and David Lacey, Pan Sonic, Bob and Roberta Smith, DJ Tendraw, Nina Hynes, Temple Bar Gallery 2007

Soundtrap began as a portfolio scheme for commissioning sonic works. “Forest (Volume IV) [is] the fourth in a series of annual exhibitions Soundtrap I coincided with Architecture Week, Doppler being “an exploring the place and potential of sound in art... curated by... David acoustic re-imagining of the architecture of Beaconsfield”. “Each sound Crawforth. His concept is to create a metaphorical forest, an environment is space-specific, offering a basic narrative on the interior and exterior with tendrils of connectivity between individual works and live events. functions of the building.... In the cafe the sound that is played is that of “The forest is filled with mimetic gestures. It is secondary and not fully a barista frothing milk with a cappuccino machine. This sound is not the formed... new growth in the form of performances, compositions and venomous whistle familiar to cafe-goers, but has been adjusted, pitches interventions will take place over the life span of ‘Forest’, creating a layered gently rising and falling, and then repeated, soft and welcoming like and temporal habitat.” The audience in entering the forest must do so with the interior itself.” The exhibition coincided with Mother of all Parties a willingness to explore and to reflect on the varied ‘forest’ sounds.... Leafcutter John, A New Sonic Work To Play, (summer solstice) with Figgis live at 1am (drums, tapes & computer- 2007, interactive sound installation grab). “Spring Heel Jack fuse shimmery, ethereal electronics with Beaconsfield Artworks set the scene by constructing a forest floor of mulch (in progress), Beaconsfield, London, SE11, wildstyle free-form jazz, for a sound that resolutely defies categorisation.” with substrata of cardboard. They define its perimeter with monotone Soundtrap II paint layers and its core with primeval electronic sound. Press release; Isobel Harbison, CIRCA, Autumn 2006; Flavorpill, KW, 20–26 June 2006 Leafcutter John uses microphone pick-ups under the forest floor that record movement above and relay this information to a software driven “May 24th, 2007 by leafcutter instrument that can record, process live and reintroduce live sound as well Exhibition detail showing BAW and Bruce as triggering more complex layers of composition.... Gilbert, Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin, Forest: well it’s finally happening, after two months of planning and preparation Volume IV, 2007 i’m in the south london Beaconsfield art space and working at turning Mark Dean dangles a carrot for the politically correct to pick at: a their lovely old floor into an amplified and interactive instrument. So far proposition, made through a reggae version of “Crimson & Clover” I have placed the speakers and tuned the sound system.” combined with Marcus Garvey’s red, green and black pan-African flag— that we are all Africans irrespective of the colour of our skin. leafcutterjohn.com>>blogarchive>>started soundtrap II installation at Beaconsfield Bruce Gilbert thrives in the realm of the unexpected. His objects are precise, but not precious, minimal assemblages that reflect his attitude to get inside sound and push it to destruction.

... Bob and Roberta Smith will compose a text to be painted at the entrance to the forest... reflecting human intervention in its most basic form—rights of ownership.”

Press release, Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin

134 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Forest VOLUME IV 135 Soundtrap Iii Glissolalia

Opposite: Aura Satz, Glissolalia, 2008, I was asked by Naomi and David to create a sonic response to Beaconsfield’s installation view, school visit, Beaconsfield, space, and to do this I was given a six-week residency in the upper gallery. London, SE11, Soundtrap III As the first woman to be involved in the Soundtrap series, I’m not sure Pages 138–139: John Wynne, 2009, installation whether my response to the space had a particular feminine quality to it. for 300 speakers, Pianola and vacuum cleaner, Beaconsfield, London, SE11, Soundtrap IV This certainly was not my starting point, and I involved a mix of performers including Aleks Kolkowski, Lydia Kavina and a female Barbershop Quartet. I had long been fascinated by the uncanny quality of sound that can be found in the theremin, the musical saw and the human voice, especially barbershop harmonies, and this provided the perfect context for me to experiment with these qualities in response to the haunting resonance of the space.

Working at Beaconsfield enabled me to take my practice to a different dimension that I had never really explored before. Until then I had always used visuals to anchor my thinking about sound. For Soundtrap I challenged myself to work without imagery, to try and make some kind of invisible marking in the architecture, through the spiralling trajectory produced by the 8-channel installation. Drawing on the illusion of the shepherd scale, the piece was performed, recorded and played back in the gallery space, informed by and relaying its echoing acoustics. David and Naomi’s input was vital to the project, in that they were completely supportive whilst allowing me the intimacy necessary to the project’s materialisation. The knowledge that I had the freedom, silence and space to work on the piece was complemented by the fact that whenever I needed advice or feedback they were always readily available. It was a technical learning curve, a creative turning point and a wonderful collaborative experience. Creating Glissolalia at Beaconsfield was a privilege.

Aura Satz

136 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH PAGE TITLE 137 138 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH PAGE TITLE 139 Soundtrap IV Courage To Refuse JOHN WYNNE 2009 Culture and Conflict Group (Katie Barlow, John Buckley, David Crawforth, Shane Cullen) 2006

“When John Wynne was invited to apply his situated sonic practice to... A Beaconsfield commission, the feature-length DVD Courage to Refuse was Soundtrap, the artist proposed to explore the divide between the static the final iteration of a project by the same name initiated by Shane Cullen in concept of space and the mutable, social status of place by working with 2002 and first digitally realised in collaboration with John Buckley under the sounds reaching the space from outside, the acoustic dimensions of the umbrella of the Culture & Conflict Group (established Chicago 1998). In 2004 gallery itself and a range of technology in various stages of redundancy. David Crawforth joined the collaboration, adding an aural component to the work exhibited in Lodz. The work that has emerged... has three sonic elements: (i) a computerised arrangement of synthetic sounds and piano notes recorded in the space, The title is taken from the Courage to Refuse Movement which represents (ii) a paper Pianola roll, and (iii) the continuous background of ambient a growing body of opinion in the Israeli Defence Forces that the occupation sound. The sculptural elements form an assemblage of hi-fi speakers, a Culture & Conflict Group (Katie Barlow, John of territories beyond the 1967 borders of Israel is both morally and legally pianola, an old vacuum cleaner, suction hose and speaker wire. The sound Buckley, David Crawforth, Shane Cullen), unjustified: “We who sensed how the commands issued to us in the Occupied is distributed using a computer-controlled 32-channel sound diffusion Courage to Refuse, 2006, single-screen, video still Territories destroy all the values that we were raised on....” They refuse to system designed for use in large theatres.... serve beyond those borders, resulting in court-martials and prison terms.

The artist has taken into account that the gallery is both its physical Also in 2004, Cullen was impressed by Katie Barlow’s Beaconsfield exhibition materials and dimensions and its social, historical, political dimensions, Visit Palestine. In 2006 Naomi Siderfin acted as producer to bring Katie adapting his preoccupations accordingly. Wynne was always clear that he Barlow, John Buckley, David Crawforth and Shane Cullen together in wanted to work with a piano for this project and the process took him collaboration. The resulting DVD “combines documentary footage from from a digital Disclavier to the earliest form of automated piano—the Jenin and Israel with a Hebrew transcription of the names of the 638 player piano or pianola.... The pianola has been painstakingly adapted and refusenik members of the Israeli military. The visual component has a sonic here is driven by the vacuum cleaner.... The pianola roll in use is a score by accompaniment offsetting the original sounds recorded in the Middle East. Franz Léhar (1870–1948), of the 1909 operetta Zigeunerliebe (Gypsy Love). The text, sound and moving image are rendered to reveal the contrasts The score has been adapted by retaining only the notes which are most and tensions existing between today’s Israeli/Palestinian territories”, and resonant in the space. The operetta has also been massively slowed down by was first presented at the Emily Tsingou Gallery, curated by Iben la Cour modifying the mechanics of the Pianola. as part of A Selected State, August 2006. Screened again as the first of Beaconsfield’s FlatScreen projects in 2009, the work was contextualised ... The piece will never repeat because the programmed sound, the piano by the event, A Meeting of Minds with Ahmed Najar (Gazan), Uri notes and the environmental sounds will never be in the same place twice.” Fruchtman (Refusenik), Jenny Najar (former Director Palestinian Solidarity Campaign) and Katie Barlow (artist) in conversation, chaired by Press release Emma Saunders (Immigration Judge).

This Beaconsfield commission was acquired for the Saatchi collection in the same year under the title Naomi Siderfin Installation for 300 Speakers, Pianola and Vacuum Cleaner.

140 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Courage To Refuse 141 The Way Out 15mm films 2009

15mm Films, The Way Out, 2009, single-screen video still

15mm Films is a collective of disability artists (in 2009 this was Aaron Williamson, Katherine Araniello, Laurence Harvey, Simon Raven, Juliet Robson and Philip Ryder), based in the UK who take an experimental approach to collaboration in their delivery of visual art works—primarily video that is informed by performance. Noting that “Disability has never had its revolutionary moment: no Suffrage, Stonewall or Watts Riots”, The Way Out draws on the bungled vanguard narratives of the golden age of 1970s armed revolutionary struggle (Baader Meinhoff, Angry Brigade) to depict a dysfunctional, imploding gang of ‘disability terrorists’. This new 15mm Films, publicity shot, 15mm Films follows the social model of disability and the main barrier to artwork comprises a series of trailers for a sequence of films that weren’t The Way Out, 2009 social inclusion, the one that we target, is the normative world’s perception made, about an absent revolution, an entity become myth—identifiable and prejudices about us.... We make irreverent, anarchic comedies with the frustrations and invisibility of disability politics per se: the missing representative of ‘crip humour’ in general, while also being willing to film about the missing revolution. experiment formally, a factor that marks us out as maverick misfits in relation to the disability arts community itself. Unusually, the artists in 15mm are differently-disabled, coming to focus on shared experiences of social exclusion under the philosophical banner Aaron Williamson, Artistic Director of 15mm Films of access rather than impairment-identity. They believe that much of the social pressure that goes by the name of disability politics is ineffectually sanctioned—absorbed top down by institutions running a tick box regime, rather than through grass-roots activism.

142 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH The Way Out 143 Let’s Do Something or “We Must Do Something”

After my degree show in 1993 three people came up to me and uttered the words, “let’s do something”. Jay Joplin visited the 1993 Goldsmith’s MA degree show but although we all stood by our beds, ie loitered around our spaces, he did not say “let’s do something” to any of us. Maybe it was because we were ‘not ready’. Maybe he saw a video I had made where I called my fellow students a “pot pourri” of bums and losers. Anthony Wilkinson, who ran a gallery in his front room, actually did say “we must do something”. Sarah Staton, who ran Sarah Staton’s Super Store said, “you can put something in my store if you want”, and Naomi Siderfin introduced herself to me at the opening of the degree show and started telling me about something called Nosepaint. The art world is divided into three groups, those who have “let’s do something” said to them, those who say, “Let’s do something”, and those who do nothing and fade away. Thankfully, although I do not exclusively belong to the first group, like Damian and Tracy, I do not belong in the last category.

I never understood why the club night Naomi and David Crawforth invented was called Nosepaint. The name sounded very much like Face Bob and Roberta Smith in residence, At the Goldsmith degree show I had made two works that I thought could Paint and I immediately thought it was an education workshop with Beaconsfield, London, SE11, Phase I: Factory be staged at Nosepaint. One was a video of humiliation stories about toddlers. A few weeks later I went to a Nosepaint event in which the Outlet, 2009–2010 my treatment by the art world and the other was a series of songs I had invited guest was an artist I had known before called Peter Lewis. Lewis, written which existed as a song book. For a long time I thought I would then as now, was an important questioner of the petty orthodoxies of the simply learn the humiliation stories and recite them like a stand up. The art world. I can’t remember what he displayed at the Nosepaint event problem was that I was not a stand up. I did not have the skill or confidence except that it consisted of side lamps placed in pools of water with lots of required, so I decided to develop the songs. private view cards scattered about. I think there was an element of ouija boards and voices from the dead about it. There were no toddlers. At that time I had been friendly for a few years with Victor Mount who ran the Ding Dong Twist Club. Vic and two of his friends put the club on There were other elements to Nosepaint. Just as you entered the vast every few months and it consisted of dancing to comedy records of the railway arch there was a stage to your left. On the night I visited there 1960s (Pinky and Perky, Ken Dodd). We drank thunderbird cocktails from was a series of performances that combined the kind of performance Flash floor cleaning bottles. It’s hard to convey the attraction of this activity art pioneered by Marina Abramovic with vaudeville irony. There was an to someone who doesn’t immediately see the charm of it but it certainly element of Vic Reeves comedy to some of the works. I had evolved the appealed to me and my wife Jessie. character of Bob Smith in New York in a monthly performance club called Epoche and Nosepaint seemed to be doing many of the same things: Vic had been developing a band which would embody the ideals of straight, old school performance, sometimes involving blood and often the Ding Dong Twist Club. There was a funny video of people leaving nakedness, experimental theatre and something approaching ‘stand up’ while they played in a club in Camden. Vic suggested I come to some comedy. Naomi offered me the same slot Peter Lewis had for the following rehearsals. I suggested we use Nosepaint as our first gig. I developed month. This was essentially the opportunity to use the large back space as a kind of game show with different stages. Between the stages the a forum for performance or installation. I asked if there was a budget to band would play, David Letterman style. During that month the band transport my work to the space. Naomi said they could pay for a van. rehearsed every weekend. When I joined the band it was called The

144 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Let’s Do Something or “We Must Do Something” 145 Child, and in Manchester there was Die Kunst. For a time we all used to play on the same bill.

After the gig I followed Nosepaint for a while. I went to a great event which was a walk around central London. Two elements stood out about this event. Firstly David Crawforth did a performance dressed as a business man where he simply walked along and tripped and fell repeatedly. This impressed me as we must have walked for at least two hours with David continually falling down. The other was a band in which the drummer from the Blue Orchids (who was amazing, playing drum kits of pots and pans) provided virtuosic changes in rhythm for two female sax players. I lost touch with Nosepaint after that. Jessie and I went to dinner with Naomi and David once in their squat flat in Oval Mansions where most of the artists lived who were to be important in the years after the first flush of the YBA’s: Fiona Banner, Paul Noble and the City Racing gang. I did not come across them again until a friend of mine, Wayne Lloyd, offered me a few days work on a building site.

During the mid-90s I was stuck in a terrible rut of the most miserable part time jobs. Everything apart from my marriage to the artist Jessie Voorsanger seemed to go from shit to shitter. I worked for Westminster Council clearing old people’s rooms of their possessions after they had died. I wiped the arses of disabled people and took them to prostitutes behind King’s Cross; I had to stand on the corner of Goodsway and Caledonian Road in the rain while the occupants of the car I had been driving gently made it rock from side to side. I cleaned up the syringes of the homeless. Worst of all I had to be nice to rich artists and move their terrible work around. Wayne knew I was broke and got me a few days Bob and Roberta Smith, This Artist is Deeply Fancy Cheese People. The name had been chosen by the other leader work putting in the downstairs ladies’ toilet at what is now Beaconsfield. Dangerous, 2010, installation view, enamel of the band, Paul Gorman. Gorman is now a big cheese himself in It amazed me that David and Naomi had transformed their once-a-month paint on board, Beaconsfield, London, SE11, rock journalism. I got on well with Paul but I think he thought I was club into Beaconsfield. It was not that I did not think them capable of Phase I: Factory Outlet taking over his band and after the Nosepaint gig I never saw him it, just that the supreme effort and belief that London did not have an again. Vic renamed the band the Ken Ardley Playboys. We went on experimental arts venue and they were going to provide it was wonderful. from Nosepaint and for about 10 years we played regularly. Martin It was like seeing the ICA being built. Creed wrote us a song, “Work 98” and we played in New York twice and toured in Germany. We made two albums recorded at Toe Rag, Wayne and I put in the ladies’ toilet floor but in truth Wayne did most of where the White Stripes were later to record, and Billy Childish put the work and my life of rubbish jobs continued until 1995 when Jessie out our first single. All this activity might not have happened if the told me she was pregnant. This changed everything and weirdly a more open-ended invitation Naomi presented to me had not been given. responsible me got a regular teaching job which left me with enough time to make my work and look after Etta, our daughter. To my shame I never Actually it would have happened but that initial invitation meant that visited Beaconsfield in its first ten years of operation. I put this down to somehow there might be an audience for such a thing and there might being wrapped up with looking after our kids. be venues in which to develop visual artists making music. For a time afterwards artists forming bands was quite a development. The Ken Ardley In 1998 Beaconsfield organised a show, British Links at the Museum of Playboys was really the first of that wave. Sometimes we were the best, Contemporary Art in Oslo. This was a great event. Bruce Gilchrist made but not always. The best remembered are Martin Creed’s Owada and Paul a wonderful piece using brain wave patterns. He discovered the inventor Roony’s Roony, but Mathew Collings had a band called Interspecies Love of the computer mouse just by looking at his brain activity. He said to

146 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Let’s Do Something or “We Must Do Something” 147 the man: “I don’t want to frighten you but you have no activity on the politics. It’s important for artists to be uncompromising. Most of mine and left side of your brain”. The man replied “I live on the right”. Hayley Beaconsfield’s generation of artists have turned culture into cash. The art Newman made a piece involving a pair of scales and some vegetables world is funded by the government, banks and oligarchs, none of whom and I sign-painted whatever people wanted to protest about. A piece is remotely interested in experimental or political art. They don’t want it, called Stop it Write Now was developed to form my contribution to the they don’t need it and they won’t fund it. If anyone tells you that you can’t first Tate Triennial in 2000, curated by Charles Esche and Virginia Button. make art that is experimental or political just ignore them.

Later Jessie and I were part of a show in Turku in Finland where we Spaces like Beaconsfield, Peer, Resonance FM and Matt’s Gallery do not developed our Family Art Project. We took our kids and made art with the provide jumping off points for aspirational artists, rather they offer venues public then the kids hung it in the gallery at their eye height. Everything for experimental and ephemeral approaches to art. A new generation of was low down. Another time Beaconsfield asked me to perform in an artists has sought out these spaces. In 2008 I attended a talk by Gustav avant-garde music festival, again in Oslo. This was a wonderful weekend Metzger at Beaconsfield; it was full of young students. Metzger said, “There where I got to see and meet amazing musicians like Pierre Bastion, Jeans should be no Art Market or private galleries.” If I am brutally honest I don’t Team and Avvico. My act was well received although actually I think it was really agree with him but his point is well made. pretty horrible. I formed a one-person band with guitar and kick drum and played Ken Ardley songs. My ears burn because so much of the time when I was developing Bob and Roberta Smith, Factory Outlet, 2009, what I do now, many of my fellow artists were like heat-seeking missiles sugar-lift etching on copper, produced by Chronic Epoch was a celebration of ten years of Beaconsfield’s after money and fame. Importantly during that time Beaconsfield, Peer, Beaconsfield, limited edition of 100 manifestation at 22 Newport Street. It ran for two months in 2005 and Resonance FM and Matt’s Gallery were encouraging work to be made ended with the Mother of all Parties. I was asked to make a piece in the in which the demands inherent in the work were the only things that cafe area. I decided upon wallpaper with a concrete poem I had discovered were important. in my daughter’s bedroom, of all her hiding places. I adapted it a little for Beaconsfield and then wallpapered the cafe area. It looked pretty good. I Bob and Roberta Smith also acted as waiter, serving people with concrete puddings and meals made in my make-shift concrete kitchen. Every Sunday I booked different bands to play in the afternoon. The show was well attended and I think people enjoyed the commitment which all the artists involved in that event put into it. The Ken Ardley Playboys played at the opening.

Now, 2009, I am in the process of completing a residency at Beaconsfield. The idea of a residency appeals to me because I am interested more in what creativity looks like than in the production of art works. The reality of art production is what is important. Last year I made far too much work. Now I am burdened with lots of large pieces which I don’t have homes for. I have also been working on lots of projects. My studio schedule is made up on the hoof and I try not to say no to projects but this means a lot of overlapping and juggling not only of what I am doing but also of how to finance my activity. I now, when I can afford it, use two very skillful assistants to help me make my projects.

If you visited Beaconsfield during this residency you would not have seen me diligently crafting my art or even trying things out, but rather a genuine reflection on what it means to make art: lots of running around, lots of trying to carve up time to make something, often in my case, by my own hand. Beyond all that, what’s important is the politics. In Beaconsfield’s case it’s the creation of a political space that says “be uncompromising about art”. In my own case it’s the space to be uncompromising about

148 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Let’s Do Something or “We Must Do Something” 149 Terminal Late at Tate Katherine Arianello and Naomi Siderfin, Dave Ball, BAW, Annie Davey, Minna Haukka, Susannah Hewlett, Howard Jacques, Hayley Newman and David Crawforth, Liz Murray, Bob and Roberta Smith/Andrew Poppy/Victor Mount/Leonardo Ulian/Nicolas Bourriaud, Kim Noble, Jessica Voorsanger 2008

For Late at Tate on 5 December 2008 Beaconsfield transformed Tate Britain with live art and music “to create a terminal space, with an array of surreal arrival and departure points”. These included BAW’s White Hole, a sonic intervention in the Manton stairwell and an optical intervention in the Duveen Gallery; Kim Noble’s latest video work (possibly non-functional); a team of beauticians offering temporary hairstyles inspired by characters in the collection; a Terminal jam involving a homemade theramin and toys, Jessica Voorsanger deep in impersonation and some monkeys.

Monkeys are cleaning the Tate! They have access to broom cupboards and back rooms and we think that the cleaning staff like them. But they aren’t us... they are body-doubles, invited to clean the Tate on our behalf. One has an Essex smile and a spotty back, the other is more demure with a Anticlockwise from top left: hairgrip to keep the fur out of her eyes. They LOVE their jobs for one Liz Murray, Hairport; Liz Murray, Hairport; night only. They clean slowly while the drunken crowds point, laugh and Salah Days Naomi Siderfinand Katherine Arianello, sometimes hold out a hand to stroke one of them before stumbling away BAW, 2010 Terminal Services; Susannah Hewlett, Terminal for another beer.... Services; Apathy Band, Leonardo Ulian, Nicolas Bourriaud, Bob and Roberta Smith, Victor Hayley Newman This sublimely ‘inappropriate’ event, a sound installation Mount (pictured), Andrew Poppy and David and exhibition, centrally involved the broadcasting of the Crawforth, Terminal Jam, Tate Britain, London, dawn call to prayer in Austin, Texas, the minaret being SW1, Terminal Late at Tate, 5 December, 2008 substituted by a very tall skyscraper.

150 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH PAGE TITLE 151 Testbed 1 Anthony Gross, Michael Curran and Lucy Gunning, Pil and Galia Kollectiv, Lilli Hartmann, Joseph Walsh, Dafna Talmor 2010

“The project has been a series of new screen-based digital commissions produced from open residencies with Beaconsfield between March and September. ‘Testbed’ is Beaconsfield’s curatorial mentoring scheme for emerging artist-curators.

The project has been an extended process and evolved from a discursive event with fellow video-film artists presented by Dafna Talmor and Joseph Walsh for Chronic Epoch 2005. Further dialogue with Beaconsfield exploring aspects of performativity, economy of means and the impact of accelerating technology on screen-based art began in 2007.... Dafna and Joe were invited to consider taking their active research a step further by making work alongside their curatorial role—and chose this route. A number of other artists were asked to engage with Beaconsfield’s Anticlockwise from top left: identity as a space—physical and conceptual—for critical enquiry. The Beaconsfield yard beforeSpaceship Earth brief was to produce a screen-based work for exhibition through readily Dafna Talmor, Spaceship Earth, 2010–2012, available means of production.” living roof; Volunteer Clare Tandy assisting Rella, 2010; Lilli Hartman, Inside-Out Cave, 2009, Works made were Anthony Gross, COLUMBO in: Kane’s Revolutions, performance, Beaconsfield, London, SE11, digital video & computer animation; Michael Curran and Lucy Gunning, Testbed I Rella, digital videos, installation and performance; Pil and Galia Kollectiv, Co-Operative Explanatory Capabilities in Organizational Design and Personnel Opposite: Management, digital video; Lilli Hartmann, Inside-Out Cave, digital video Joseph Walsh, Rise of Treble, Ode to Bass, 2010, and performance; Joseph Walsh, Rise of Treble, Ode to Bass, digital video and video still; Michael Curran and Lucy Gunning, performance; Dafna Talmor, Spaceship Earth, eco structure with living roof, Rella, 2010, residency, Beaconsfield, London, happenings, digital video documentation and web presence. SE11, Testbed I

Visitor text

152 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Testbed 1 153 Gaming In Waziristan Am I making up what Noor Behram, Butler Brothers, Nooshin Fahrid 2011 really happened?

Svein Flygari Johansen 2012

For the past three years, Noor Behram has hurried to the site of drone strikes in his native Waziristan... to photograph and document the impact of missiles controlled by a joystick thousand of miles away, on US air force bases.

Sometimes arriving on the scene just minutes after the explosion, he first has to put his camera aside and start digging through the debris to see if there are any survivors... The drones frequently hit the same place again, a few minutes after the first strike, so looking for the injured is risky. There are other dangers too: militants and locals are suspicious of anyone with a camera... it is a local network of spies... that are directing the strikes.

But Noor Behram says his painstaking work has uncovered an important— and unreported—truth... far more civilians are being injured or dying than the Americans and Pakistanis admit... “for every 10 to 15 people killed, maybe they get one militant”, he says... Clive Stafford Smith, head of Reprieve... has launched a lawsuit along with a Pakistani lawyer, Shahzad Akbar, seeking to bring justice to those responsible for civilian deaths from drones. “I think these pictures are deeply important evidence”, says Stafford Smith. “They put a human face [on the drone strike campaign] that is in Svein Flygari Johansen, We Are Growing Up “Svein Flygari Johansen is a creature of the forest and fjord, spending the marked contrast to what the US is suggesting its operators... are doing’”. as Patriots, 2012, bacteria culture on rubber- summer months high up inside the Arctic Circle. He is otherwise based backed sheet, Beaconsfield, London, SE11, in Oslo as an influential contemporary artist. Identification with nature When human rights lawyer Clive Stafford-Smith is introduced to me by Phase II: Am I making up what is at the core of Flygari’s work, where imagery from the organic world Alexa Ferranti—looking for a venue to exhibit an important cache of really happened? connects with high technology. The work links themes of indigenous photographs—I listen with polite interest and then explain that Beaconsfield culture, capitalist meltdown, patriotism and global politics with materials is an organisation with an agenda primarily for art, although we like Pages 156–157: Svein Flygari Johansen, Am ranging from sticks and stones to complex computer programming. Code From top: to include our politics. An exhibition without an aesthetic context is I Making Up What Really Happened?, 2012, for all Flygari’s digital works is written by Jonny Bradley with whom he has Nooshin Farhid, Conic Studies, 2010, video impossible. I then start to think about how to create that context.... installation view, table, glass of milk, electronics, collaborated since 2001.... Flygari has invited younger Norwegian artists, still; Noor Behran, Documents from the ammonium sulphate, PVC, water, projection, Frode Halvorsen and Jorid Levke Eide, to make new work for the ongoing Frontier-Noor Syed, aged 8, 14 February, 2009, Introducing artists who have taken the dubious morality of remotely flat screen, Beaconsfield, London, SE11 FlatScreen programme.” mobile phone image; Butter Brothers, The controlled missiles as subject in their work forms a cradle for Noor Behran’s Ethical Governor, 2010, video still, Beaconsfield, mobile phone documentation of the real-life consequences of drone activity. Press release London, SE11, Gaming in Waziristan, 2011 Then there is the problem of the material itself: poorly pixelated mobile phone pictures and a few videos of faraway aircraft that might be vultures... Opposite: Bruce Gilbert and BAW, Diluvial, to print them out and stick them on a wall is not an option. Instead we get 2011, installation view, telegraph pole, permission to splice the material in one long video loop in order to show it bamboo bundles, black emulsion, ship’s as a large-scale, powerful projection in the upper space, supported by Butler beacon lamp, disco lamp, video projection, and Farhid on the small-scale FlatScreens in the lower space, below. And sound, Beaconsfield, London, SE11, Gaming then create a title: Gaming in Waziristan. We have an exhibition. in Waziristan

Naomi Siderfin

154 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Am I making up what really happened? 155 156 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH PAGE TITLE 157 Soundtrap V: Diluvial bruce gilbert and baw 2011

Jon Wozencroft, Diluvial: Bruce Gilbert and BAW, 2013, CD design for Touch Music

Bruce Gilbert and Beaconsfield Artworks presented Diluvial during AGORA, the fourth Athens Biennale. In the context of an event that sought to explore creative alternatives to bankruptcy by producing an exhibition in an emblematic building, the former Athens Stock Exchange, Diluvial took as its theme the rising sea levels that preoccupy people living close to water. It played on the dynamic between creation myths, flood geology and the concept of global warming. Diluvial manifested in three stages from May 2011: as a performance/installation on the Suffolk coast, as an evolving exhibition at Beaconsfield and as a sound release published by the Touch label as a CD.

158 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Soundtrap V: Diluvial 159 The Struggle Fall Rachel Garfield 2012 Minna Haukka, Thomas Kvam, Angus Sanders-Dunnachie, Matthew Tickle 2012

Mathew Tickle, Angus Sanders-Dunnachie, 2012, installation view, Beaconsfield, London, SE11, Fall

Left: Rachel Garfield in residence, 2012, “Described as ‘the book of the last decade’, Alain Badiou’s philosophical take Beaconsfield, London, SE11 on the twentieth century, Le Siècle, provides the touchstone from which Rachel Garfield embarks on her own exploration into some of the big Right: Rachel Garfield, The Straggle, 2010, questions that have preoccupied generations straddling two centuries. “Discoveries in the field of light and sound by the scientist Nikola Tesla video still, The Struggle: a Trilogy have been of special interest to artist Matthew Tickle, but the engineer’s The Struggle is a new series of essay films exploring the impact of speculations about the relationship between the brain, perceptual organs politicised familial interactions on the formation of subjectivity in the and emotion in the production of images seems curiously pertinent to all individual—starting with Part 1: The Straggle [sic] a study focusing the artists in this exhibition. on individuals whose parents were left-wing activists and the socialist magician Ian Saville. Initially ambushed... by Minna Haukka’s soundwork, the visitor is taken unawares by a random selection of vocabulary rendered uncanny by Rachel Garfield... has often dealt with disjunctions of narrative to explore the repetition... the source is a course book issued to Finnish prison officers relationship between the social and the political spheres, and the tensions in required to learn English for dealing with international inmates... Matthew the formation of identity through a subjectivity that doesn’t quite cohere. The Tickle’s coven of cats with mismatched eyes create a disquieting presence body of work moves into an investigation of inter-generational discussions, to within an environment pulsating with randomly controlled RGB light as see how epochal shifts in thinking might play out now and into the future. three Geiger counters switch from one state to another. This quantum mechanical description of a universe where there is no... free will This inter-generational interest opens out in the earlier work... Here is counterbalanced by a central rope, inducing a decision... whether or There Then Now in which Rachel Garfield and the acclaimed experimental not to puncture the ambience by ringing the brass bell suspended in the filmmaker Stephen Dwoskin engage in a conversation about the role of loft... the Tickle environment coalesces with... objects created by Angus the artist in their generation, each filming the other’s home. Here There Then Sanders-Dunnachie. This artist’s source material is the ubiquitous stream Now highlights Garfield’s ongoing relationship with the traditional concerns of images endlessly reproduced as tattoos, commercial signage, cartoons of the avant-garde documentary film. and clip art. He... gives them new form... hand-sawing a motif several times to assemble a sculptural object, rendering a throwaway scribble on a In the new series Garfield specifically engages with people whose identities sheet of Perspex or committing an emblem to a moving image. have been formed in homes where the ethical environment has been dominated by socialist politics, religion or the military.” Tickle’s low-tech focus on the eye... is picked up.... Thomas Kvam contrasts the eye of a horse with the all-seeing lens of the World Wide Web.” Press release Press Release

160 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Fall 161 Anniversary—an act of memory solo, collective and multi-lingual recitations from memory of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights a performance series in 60 acts Monica Ross and co-recitors 2008–2013

Article 1: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, proclaimed and adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 10 December 1948, is the most frequently translated document in the world and has inspired the constitutions of many newly independent states and new democracies. Nevertheless it is still subject to question and dispute.

To mark the 60th anniversary of the Declaration, Monica Ross sought to carry out 60 solo, collective and multi-lingual recitations of its text in different contexts and with different groups of people. On 19 September 2009 she led a collective recitation of the Declaration by artists, from memory. Artists chose one or more articles significant to them and committed them to memory in a preferred language. The recitation thus became a metaphor for the struggle for the memory and consciousness of Human Rights.

From top: Ross first performed a solo version of this work as part of Beaconsfield’s Monica Ross, Act 47, collective recitation Chronic Epoch in 2005. “rightsrepeated—an act of memory” was originally with Cathedral School Class 4, Southwark hosted by Hayley Newman within the context of Woodshed. Cathedral, SE1, London, Anniversary–an act of memory, 13 November, 2012 Beaconsfield’s association with the work continued through the production of the artist’s print, rightsrepeated and a sustained effort to persuade Monica Ross, Act 13, collective recitation schools to take up the project. Act 47 was the first recitation in the series with 58 artists, Beaconsfield, London, SE11, to be delivered by children in Southwark Cathedral on 13 November 2012 Anniversary–an act of memory, by Monica Ross and Class 4 from the Cathedral Primary School of 19 September, 2009 St Saviour and St Mary Overy, following a series of workshops in the Opposite: Monica Ross, rightsrepeated, school organised by Beaconsfield. The recitation was later broadcast on 2005, A0 digital lithograph, published by Resonance FM. Beaconsfield in a limited edition of 150 on the occasion of Chronic Epoch, 2005 Naomi Siderfin

162 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH PAGE TITLE 163 Monoculture Tamsyn Challenger 2012–2013

Tamsyn Challenger, Brank (Facebook), 2013, “Through an important project titled 400 Women, Challenger was exhibition detail, coated steel, Beaconsfield, approached to contribute to a book called Lets Start a Pussy Riot—a London, SE11, Monoculture fundraising venture in support of the three women jailed for their roles in the Russian feminist collective of the same name, who have famously asserted their independence through music. Her idea was to create a pop- up page in the book, depicting a ducking stool. When this concept proved to be prohibitive in terms of cost, the artist built a life-sized, sculptural version to photograph. This art object has been the spark for a body of new sculptures that take a range of ancient instruments of pseudo-sexual torture as their inspiration. Painted in the distinctive branding blues of Facebook and Twitter, these quasi-Modern pieces evoke associations ranging from the municipal playground to classical busts and the apparatus of S&M club culture.

Challenger’s Monoculture draws a parallel with the agricultural practice of cultivating a single cash crop, and its outcomes in the so-called Colony Collapse Disorder that is decimating sections of the eco-system. She links social networking with cultural homogenisation on a global scale and asks her audience to join her in questioning the level of control being wielded through a supposedly free environment like the Internet.”

“Negotiating sexuality has and always will be fraught with danger. Camille Paglia holds that ‘Sexuality is like nature’s red flag to a bull’ and there are good arguments to rebut the notion that rape is an expression of violence rather than of sexuality. Whatever the truth of the matter, we still have to deal with the consequences. Tamsyn Challenger’s new works suggest that allowing our identities as individual women to slip away is an act of irresponsibility that may be having far greater consequences than we can imagine.”

Naomi Siderfin, Press release and “Branks and Bras”, March 2013

164 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH 165 Asymmetrical Cinema Phase IV MATERIAL CONJECTURES (Kirsten Cooke, Dale Holmes) with Amanda Judith Dean 2013 beech and alan clarke 2013

“Judith Dean’s work is concerned with ideas of territory and claiming, value and exchange.

Phase IV makes use of Beaconsfield’s entire site to present an installation— produced ‘at the push of a button’—that reflects on the ubiquity of imagery in a digital age.

.... she proposes that ‘everything is an image’, exploring implications of this for both mediated and unmediated worlds.... Dean considers the walls of the upper space to be giant computer screens on which images function as pixels... small fragments of a much larger image that clearly isn’t there.... Content varies widely in individual works: some focus on a narrow range of subjects... others are much broader.... Diversity and being ‘all over the place’... are recurrent themes.... The images read both as flat, virtual spaces and physical things: some are torn, cut into, drawn on, have fallen on the floor. Both connected to and disconnected from the architecture....

In the Arch space Dean explores further... the neighbours are introduced (spies from no 132, occupied by MI6, fish from no 136—smoked salmon Material Conjectures, installation view with “Material Conjectures is the co-authored project of the artist Dale Holmes packers). The space seems minimally occupied: it too is an image, and Amanda Beech and Alan Clarke, Beaconsfield, and the curator Kirsten Cooke, formed in response to a collection of there is violence in the architecture—a recurring sound piece FILLS the London, SE11, Asymmetrical Cinema, 2013 agreements and disagreements located in art, politics and philosophical space (every 8 minutes). The Shrunken Head of Sculpture sits in the far left realisms. Asymmetrical Cinema is the title of their new exhibition. hand corner, viewing an image of New Scotland Yard.... Conceived for Beaconsfield’s Arch Gallery, discrete sculptural structures augment the existing architecture of the space, as well as providing surfaces Previous works have conflated the epic and the everyday in a variety that act as projection screens for a programme of films. Asymmetrical of forms—installations, objects, videos and performances, including Cinema draws from the debates surrounding the real in art and presents a the use of A4 digital prints. Dean has exhibited widely.... In 2005 she material philosophy to challenge the systemic nature of image consumption. won the Jerwood Sculpture Prize.... Working in the expansive spaces of Beaconsfield has been... ‘like being allowed to fly’”. Can we understand this new artwork (comprising sculptural structures and screenings of works by Amanda Beech, Alan Clarke and Material Press release Conjectures) as an abstraction? From top: Judith Dean, Phase IV, 2013, installation view The interval is an intervention that marks the closing of Asymmetrical with digital prints; Mary George, The Cult of Cinema: Act 1 and the opening of Act 2. This discursive event will launch a the Endorphin, Phase IV event, 29 November, publication by Material Conjectures.” 2013; Judith Dean, idonthaveyourmarbles, Beaconsfield, London, SE11, Phase IV ebay Press release event, 26 July, 2013

166 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Phase IV 167 The Unfun Fair / his original core impulse acquires gravitas as it reflects the experience of a wider social body. The Unfun Fair Too Simon Tyszko 2013 The composition of sound and light... exhibited in the Arch is bound together by neon—a core symbol of consumer culture—and 10,000 volts. Simon Tyszko is notorious for disrupting his domestic life by installing a full-scale Dakota aeroplane wing in his West London flat, in Simon Tyszko, I Want to Be In the Unfun Fair “Tyszko’s mixed media practice constructs narratives that originate in acknowledgement of the events of 9/11.”1 Too, event for radio broadcast with special the joys and tragedies of his colourful personal life. The expression of dead guests, Beaconsfield, London, SE11, The poignant emotional experiences finds form through a variety of physical 1 http://www.phlight.org/ Press release Unfun Fair / The Unfun Fair Too, 26 July, 2013 materials. Discarded machines are rejuvenated and linked to other objects creating new hybrids animated by sound or light. Through its evolution,

168 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH The Unfun Fair / The Unfun Fair Too 169 Arkhipelagos (Navigating the We Are History Tides of Time) John Timberlake 2014 IC-98 2014

IC-98, Arkhipelagos (Navigating the Tides of “This is IC-98’s second exhibition at Beaconsfield following their John Timberlake, We Are History, 2014, We Are History combines a number of Timberlake’s recurrent subjects Time), 2013, installation view, pencil drawn UK debut in 2012. Visitors to Beaconsfield’s Arch space were installation view, plywood, acrylic, with themes of staging and re-staging in a large-scale work conceived animation, Beaconsfield, London, SE11 enthralled by the highly detailed pencil-drawn animation, A View from Beaconsfield, London, SE11 specifically for Beaconsfield. As with his concurrent practice in the Other Side, which focused on the slow passage of time in relation photography and drawing, Timberlake’s engagement with painting has to an architectural representation of human endeavour. Arkhipelagos for many years revolved around those forms where painting plays a builds on the themes of erasure in this work, imagining the end of supplementary role. In the case of We Are History, the painting exists as the Anthropocene period not only as representing closure but a new a staged backdrop. Forced perspective and use of the cut-out revisits beginning, incorporating the hope that, in spite of everything, nature an intimate historical relationship between diorama and emergent will one day prevail. photographic forms in the context of Beaconsfield’s location, site of popular dioramas and painted backdrops staged at Vauxhall Pleasure Established in 1998 and based in Turku, Finland, the group’s original Gardens throughout photography’s infancy. But to revisit, post-Cold War, name was Iconoclast, an allusion to the destruction of images and an a painterly visualisation of the phantasm of nuclear conflict might also be antagonism towards prevailing values. The group’s members are Visa read as perverse nostalgia for both the ostensible reassurances of a former Suonpää (b 1968) and Patrik Söderlund (b 1974), who, through their global balance of terror, and a mode and medium that is perennially being approach to the virtual, articulate a language of becoming.” declared outmoded. Timberlake says, “The phrase ‘We Are History’ poses the question of who (or what) is speaking—the traditional cinematic Press release apocalypse survivor?—the objects in the gallery, ‘speaking’ as an index of human agency?—or a hybrid assemblage of both?” Visitors with cameras are encouraged to photograph themselves within the installation.”

Press release

170 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH We Are History 171 ART & COMPROMISE I

Art & Compromise was an irregular series of public talks, with moderators, that took place between February 2008 and 2011. The transcripts have been heavily edited to retain the core of texts that directly addressed the notion of compromise in art.

“The 20th century concept of the artist as a politically alienated idealist has undergone a significant shift in recent years. Is there any form of moral obligation still within art’s purpose? What price integrity? Can the negotiations of compromise be catalysts for creative invention?”

Now, ages ago, when we lived in caves, the entrance one is more powerful; one dancer yields, the other in places that are national galleries, or regional is an idea that the art object which is mediated needed protection, and the question “Friend/Foe?” steps forward energetically; but they create a fusion, galleries, or local galleries, or the galleries owned by by a commercial gallery... rules out... addressing was the uppermost issue. And here negotiate/ which involves compromise, involves negotiation, an individual. It’s just that, in the last case, it should conscience. And yet... if art has any sense at all, it compromise was at the centre of this early phase which is such an important part of compromise. then be not simply a gallery where individual artists has to be in some degree, to the extent that it can be of civilisation. Seal off the entrance and you die of But it is harmonious, it is creative, it is satisfying, it are picked, handpicked and selected, and then prizes part of a conscientious reflection on the values that pollution, you asphyxiate.... So at the very centre of has a meaning. So I don’t think it is up to us to say, are attached. are shaping the human enterprise at a given time. life there’s this question of negotiation, compromise “Compromise—no! No thanks.” It’s not as simple with one aspect of reality, one aspect of survival as that. Compromise when it leads to art, when it Revolutionary art, art in revolutions, is another Gustav Metzger, artist and political and environmental activist, with Tony strategy or another.... Now, the people who inhabit leads to reflection, when it leads to an expansion subject we need to consider, which we can consider... Carter, artist and Principal of City and Guilds School that which is known as the Art World need to get of understanding—ja? It’s not simply a question of we forget—we don’t want to face that art is of Art, 6 February 2008. used to the responsibility of taking control of life— saying, “No, because we don’t like the sound of the dangerous, that art can be destroyed, that artists control of life then—and I suggest it is a question term.” And here I’d like to pick up on something suffer horrific experience as artists. As literary which percolates through the millennia to our which for me is actually the most important figures, of course, we know of Turkey, we know of present moment. Unless this happens, art and artists aspect. The core of art, I believe, is a striving for China, and it’s ongoing, isn’t it—ongoing, the way will remain in a kind of ghetto, running in circles, an absolute. Now there is, of course, no satisfying artists have to compromise, have to negotiate, for within its confines. Compromise, I suggest, is directly definition of an absolute. You have it when you see sheer survival. Compromise, I suggest, is directly tied to issues of responsibility. it, or when you hear it, or when you know it. And tied to issues of responsibility. each of us may have a particular conception of what To get hold of technology, artists have to compromise. this absolute might be. Running up to an absolute Tony Carter: the question about the nature of The question remains: to what degree and to what there will be millions and millions of variations and compromise is: what is at stake? What essentially purpose? Now, of course this is a subject that concerns divergences, diversions. Clearly, an absolute cannot do we offend if we use the word “compromise” in us the most. There’s a question of commission, when bear compromise. a negative way? And what, of course, are the skills we get commissioned—to what extent is the artist involved? What is the kind of characteristic of the in control of that commission, to what extent does Now, I suggest that movements such as Fluxus, artist who skilfully and appropriately negotiates the artist have to negotiate with the owner of the Situationism and elements of Happenings are the occasions when they’re required to make capital or the arts councils of this world in order to put attempts by artists to get out of the strains of the compromise?... can we believe that there is any through their ideas and ideals? gallery system, and the gallery system is for me essentially ethical responsibility for the artist which a central issue.... I believe the gallery system is can be compromised?... in terms of doing my job, Escaping the dilemma of compromise. Compromise, an extremely dangerous and regressive form of both as a practitioner and as a custodian, what I’ve I suggest is not compromised when, as in dance dealing with art.... What I’m after is to siphon out found is it is increasingly difficult to identify any kind for example, the persons have the same ideal and the commercial aspect of galleries.... People have a of ethical obligation that is central to art practice.... impetus. They relate to each other. One bends, need to come together. And they can come together It may be that the thing we have to struggle with

172 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH ART & COMPROMISE 1 173 ART & COMPROMISE II ART & COMPROMISE III

In Europe, new ideas and theoretical debates was facilitated by the use of photography in the surrounding race, representation and cultural colonies... photographs sent back to Europe difference began to emerge around 1840.... Across helped to establish the illusion that European the West, especially within debates relating to civilisation had a moral obligation to assist in culture, science and theology, there was a severe the development of Africa, and emphasised turn against the black subject. Photography played powerful Eurocentric feelings of European a critical and important role in the development of cultural superiority.... These early photographs these new constructions of the ‘other’.... did not explain traditional customs—they I will not suggest that artists should compromise in to the current preoccupation with work presented simply displayed them—and their meaning any way in their artistic processes and concerns.... on a very large, spectacular scale; work which The discourse of racial difference was disrupted was left open for fantastic interpretations by However, because all art is an invitation to an privileges or relies overtly on mediation by curators; fundamentally by the humanitarian debates put European scientists.... inter-subjective encounter, compromise should be work that encourages easy access and consumption forward by the abolitionist movements that led to considered an essential and productive component rather than slower, more intimate and more the final emancipation of slaves across the British The repositioning of Africa as being of no significance of the mediation and reception of work. meaningful reflection. Empire in 1838.... This, however, began to change to human civilisation was central to the European as the colonisation of Africa became increasingly formation of its new self.... The desire to expose The simple reality is that compromise is a primary Another identifiable trait was a resistance to the commercially viable. Economically and culturally, an evolutionary gap between Europeans and and essential feature of the role and function of pristine presentation of work and autonomous forms it became important to counteract the evangelical Africans was therefore critical to the propagation artists or anyone generating cultural forms and that reference consumption and branding.... [Many] abolitionists’ ideals, which proposed that Africans of European cultural superiority and photography intellectual property—in the sense that all art is a expressed a preference for work that opens up a shared a common humanity with Europeans. This was identified as being the perfect vehicle to form of knowledge production—in the postmodern space for more discreet reflection, is on a smaller, enlightened message worked against the aspirations carry those new truths about Africa forward.... age... there are two areas of compromise I would like more intimate scale, is incidental, may be ephemeral of those aiming to colonise Africa.... Africa was not just colonised physically—visually it to address.... The theoretical developments which or porous or open to negotiation... a form of became the subject of Western myth and fantasy. make compromise and negotiation a necessary knowledge production that can inspire, educate and The Enlightenment emphasis on the unity of the Within Europe, Africa functioned as a dark rumour and legitimate ideological position for artists, in activate in personal terms. human race was allied to an Evangelical Christian in which a myriad of fantastic stories could be which artistic integrity is very much intact and belief in the family of man. told or imagined.... Within the European visual where compromise can be considered a catalyst for Most of the artists we consulted found the private plane, photography did not describe the ‘other’: it creative invention; and secondly, the need for artists or commercial sectors had been more instrumental Given that most of Europe and the Americas had constructed it.... With hindsight, we now accept to negotiate the meaning, value and status of their in the development of their practice as an artist, not by 1840 banned slavery, this benign attitude that this form of racial observational behaviour says work in an increasingly hybrid, transactional visual and most felt that this sector is more open to risk- towards racial difference was by no means universally more about the coloniser than the colonised but it arts ecology. This may involve forms of compromise taking.... If an artist wishes to be publicly accessible, accepted.... What emerged across Europe was an is important to recognise that this type of scientific in the conventional sense, but these form part of financially supported and critically considered, ie aggressive response to growing liberal attitudes scrutiny condensed as knowledge and fact functions symbiotic relationships, which are necessary and visible in the art, then for those artists who find towards African people.... Whilst attempting to prove as a clear example of epistemic violence. mostly beneficial for artists.... Compromise forms this lack of control over their work challenging, European racial superiority, the other important part of both the theoretical and practical site of compromise will be a necessary attitude to acquire. nineteenth-century cultural shift within the West was Mark Sealy, Director of Autograph, Association of Black Photographers, cultural production. that academics began to publicly deny the importance “The organ that weeps—global photography”, Paul Hobson, Director of the Contemporary Art Society, of Africa’s influence on Western civilisation. 11 February 2009. During research for Life is More Important than Art 28 May 2008 with Gilane Tawadros, a number of themes emerged It was within this emergent aggressively anti- from our conversations with artists.... The most African ideological climate that photography strongly articulated included a general resistance... entered Africa.... Making the case for civilisation

174 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH ART & COMPROMISE III 175 ART & COMPROMISE V

Tony Carter: What kind of compromise would offend you out all the time.... But... as a teacher I know JT: I think artists are... compromised more than they what I would call an obligation within the individual that I compromised all the time. You know, to be a compromise. Circumstances... compromise them.... My artist’s practice? As a kind of point of departure, I’d say teacher you have to embrace compromise. You have experience is it’s always better to do what you want to that maybe the one thing that Jon and I agree on for to address things that you’re actually not interested do in these circumstances... if you do what you want sure is that it has something to do with quality. in.... And you make compromises as a professional to do with a conviction that you feel you can bring artist all the time... it’s no use saying, “Well, I don’t to bear on it, people are surprisingly positive in their Jon Thomson: Quality, it seems to me, relates always like that gallery”.... You say, “Is this a good space to response to it. Whereas if you try to temporise, the to judgement, and that seems to me a fundamental show my work?” If so, as long as you can bring yourself temporisation becomes apparent in what you’ve done. issue. We make judgements according to our notions to bear the people who surround the operation, of quality. you make a compromise and you deal with it. Those TC: In terms of compromise.... I think all one can say kind of compromises are... part of the incidents and is urge people who have aspirations to be active in a TC: I practise art I suppose on the basis of a belief consequences of living your life in the public domain. creative way in the cultural world we inhabit to be as that... any object I put before the world, before a But the others, those in the studio, I don’t think you informed as they possibly can be, but to have eyes in public, is my attempt to make a telling reflection on can make compromises there. the back of your head and more than two ears.... how the world is, seen through the complex substance of human intelligence and sensitivity. And if we know TC: (You will know the act of faith that the artist Jon and I were talking about a particular approach to that the thing does not answer to the promise that makes when from some sort of fumbling beginning the notion of compromise... there is in a way something was our reason for our embarking on the creative you have a sense that if you assemble materials, deal very clear and simple about it... does it matter, that action, we try again. with processes, in a certain way, something... that individual conscience in respect of making sense of meets the standards of quality, will be there at the what you do when you’re alone in that creative space? JT: That’s where the compromise cannot be made, end of it. And usually the experience is anti-climactic For me it does. in my view... at first. It doesn’t do that. And the act of faith is in the uncertainty that the promise will fulfil itself. Jon Thomson, former Principal of Goldsmiths, TC: And that’s where we’d agree... That’s one... act of faith.... The other is, the basis of in conversation with Tony Carter, 18 February 2009 this expectation that other people will be interested TC: If art education makes the compromises that in what you do. However exacting it might be in the seem to be inevitable if it is to survive in some form, studio, why should they be interested? That’s where the can art in the terms of high art survive? ethical or moral issue lies for me. It’s trying to identify why other people should be interested. And if they... JT: I think you can’t make compromises in relationship accord trust to you in this act of faith, what is it that to the work that you do in your studio, because that you would be betraying if you did betray their trust? is where the question of quality is absolutely fronting

176 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH ART & COMPROMISE V 177 ART & COMPROMISE VI

Opposite: Mark Dean, Christian Disco (Terminator), 2010, video, installation view, Beaconsfield, London, SE11, Phase II: The Beginning of The End

The high-modernist conception of art as the new As a practising artist and a practising Christian, religion appears to have been confirmed in our I believe that the Spirit of God is involved with all postmodern culture, if Sunday attendances at human activity, including art; I have experienced the Tate Modern are anything to go by.... Where did fruit of this relationship in my own practice, and in the this idea come from? The pioneers of modernist work of others. However, the idea that artists have abstraction—Malevich, Mondrian, and Kandinsky— some special access to the ‘spiritual’ is rotten. Art is were all associated with Theosophy, an esoteric not the new religion; religion is—or should be—the system founded in 1875 by Madame Blavatsky, which new religion. What art is—or could be—remains mixed elements of eastern mysticism and western (thank God) an open question. scientism to form “a scientific religion and a religious science” (William Q Judge, 1893).... Kandinsky’s Mark Dean, artist, “Concerning the word ‘spiritual’ in art”, manifesto Concerning the Spiritual in Art of 1911 drew 3 February 2011. heavily on theosophical ideas of synaesthesia, and again, his paintings of this period look very similar to so-called “thought forms built by music” wherein “sound produces form as well as colour... clearly visible and intelligible to those who have eyes to see”.... A century later it may still appear that the contemporary arts are a more progressive force than traditional religion, given recent attempts to ban books (eg Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses) and close down exhibitions (eg Chris Ofili’sVirgin Mary) on religious grounds.... In terms of art, the modernist notion of progress is, in its theosophist origins, actually based on the old gnostic heresy that the material world is a dirty and unworthy place, one that we need to escape from into the ‘spiritual’ realm—with the means provided by gnosis. However, my religion tells me that the created world is not bad, but fallen, and it is not esoteric knowledge that will save us, but God, in person.

178 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH PAGE TITLE 179 Raft the jetty, balancing my cigarette on the edge of the worn pine boards, last sip of beer, jump off, arms outstretched towards the pure blue sky.... She looked at me bored. I said, No it doesn’t matter if there’s no ensuite— that’s not important, just a clean bed please. OK, a room with a triple glazed slip window overlooking the fast lane will do me fine.

I fell asleep to a real-time Kraftwerk video: My neck spasms and my head jerks forward, then snaps back. I stare ahead. For an instant it was all a blur. I have to stop, pause, take a break before I We’re driving driving driving on the Autobahn fall asleep and never wake up. Before us is a wide valley The sun is shining with glittering rays I see a motel, pull over, roll into a space, get out, lock the door. Make The driving strip is a grey track sure the tarpaulin is covering everything in the back of the pick-up, White stripes, green edge tuck in the corners so you can’t see the piled up naked bodies and the Now we turn the radio on pink haired troll. It just looks like a typical load of bits and bobs, jaggedy From the speaker it sounds: wood or any old junk, well—under the blue plastic at least. I walk We’re driving on the Autobahn away, look back, walk further, look back. This is Sweden, somewhere between Gottenburg and Stockholm, the motorways are empty and Seven hours later I woke, not one thought about the bodies in the back of clean, smooth, flat and fast. A land where people are honest, pure, well The Pick-Up, all tangled and fleshy. off, and in harmony with nature—what would they want with a pink haired naked self-portrait of Tracey Emin as a Troll? Refreshed, I set off for Stockholm. I’d never been in Sweden before, it was spring and the landscape opened up before me like one of Eugene Jansson’s To put this into context, I was driving our sculpture—a renovated shimmering landscapes of Stockholm from the nineteenth century— BAW, Pick Up (detail), 1997, Morris Minor Morris Pick-up with a whisky barrel full of arrows in the back, penetrated by a long grey track, the sun shining with glittering rays. One van, barrel, arrows, Helsinki Stationsplatsen, from England to Finland—to a show we curated called between the hand on the steering wheel, fag in mouth—it felt like I was going at the between the devil and the (deep) blue sea devil and the deep (blue) sea in Helsinki, 1997. Pick-up was a BAW speed of sound. In actual fact about 50 mph, foot flat on the floor. (This was (Beaconsfield Art Works) piece by Angus Neill, Naomi Siderfin and pretty normal for me—initially thinking that I was going faster, making Naomi Siderfin, David Crawforth, Angus myself. We were the three artist founders of Beaconsfield in Vauxhall more of an impact. Then reality loomed large, always hitting quickly.) Neill with Morris Minor van, Arch 134, and in a collaborative art practice from the start. Other artists in the Beaconsfield, London, SE11, 1997 show were Stuart Brisley, Robert Ellis, Tracey Emin, Bruce Gilchrist, Autobahn sounds far better in German: Hayley Newman and Mark Wallinger. I transported the majority of Wir fahr’n fahr’n fahr’n auf der Autobahn Tracey’s work, etchings and a waxwork troll—that would be part Vor uns liegt ein weites Tal of the citywide show, her’s occupying the Muu Gallery—in the Die Sonne scheint mit Glitzerstrahl back of the Pick-up. We could only afford limited use of proper Art Die Fahrbahn ist ein graues Band transportation, so my task was to make this part possible, so what Weisse Streifen, grüner Rand better way than to have a driveable artwork with good storage. Jetzt schalten wir ja das Radio an Aus dem Lautsprecher klingt es dann: Being an amateur I was torn between, on one hand wanting to do normal Wir fah’rn auf der Autobahn... things like go out for a pint or two during the trip and sleeping in a bed at night, and on the other hand staying with the van at all times, no matter I laughed at myself—no Porsche—thinking of the Ant Hill Mob in what. I failed in the latter on two occasions, the above being number one the Bullet Proof Bomb from Whacky Races, using their feet to go and then drinking all night in Gottenburg on the way back, number two faster—I reckoned that would work with me. I probably looked (in my defence I did park the van in a locked fenced carpark by the ferry). more like a Slag Brother in the Bouldermobile—they were such At the reception of the motel—one room for the night please, preferably great names—Sargeant Blast and Private Meeky, Red Max and the at the back facing away from the motorway, with a panoramic view of the Crimson Haybailer! forest, with little wooden cottages overlooking lakes, smoke billowing out of their natural wood saunas. Beer bottle in hand I imagined running down At the same time the rest of Tracey’s pictures under glass, sent to Helsinki

180 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Raft 181 by specialist courier, arrived smashed, which Andy Best and Merja metal vessel’s belly, I stood on the empty ferry deck. The sea and wind Puustinen (our curatorial collaborators in Finland) got quickly reglazed— blew viciously at my home-coming. Feeling quite confused, I knew that so well repaired in fact you’d never have known. everything had changed, tears mixed with seawater flushing my eyes. I remember thinking how easy it would be to jump into the grey sea—to be Before the trip, one evening Dave P and I spent many hours talking in swallowed up and never seen again. the hallway of Block One, Oval Mansions (we lived in this arty squat for nearly a decade after graduating from the Royal Academy Schools). This ... extended chat was unusual, as exchanges between us were usually shorter and less philosophical (although he was a philosopher of sorts). He talked BAW started with A Public Work of Art, 1995 on the South Bank. This work about coming with me to Finland. To be honest I’m not sure he would played with ideas about architecture, perceptions of public space, fear have, but I think he half wanted to get away from the pull of his spiralling of death and ideologies of control. The public installation on Queen’s smack habit and the microcosm of Mansion life. Walk was constructed from concrete paving slab, cast bronze roundel and electronics controlling a sound composition—a 17-hour-variation of a Don’t get me wrong, Oval Mansions was a great enabler, allowing Naomi death rattle (a sound source researched by us from medical recordings in the and I to ‘bring into being’ Nosepaint and Beaconsfield. City Racing was Wellcome Trust archive). Beaconsfield opened its new (artist-run) space for born there around the same time too—Nosepaint’s more conventional manufacturing new ideas a few months later in Newport Street, Vauxhall. bastard sibling—so we were in good company. I’ve always thought the Mansions represented what can happen if you gift ‘anyone’ a subsidised This space, as with our own individual pursuits, follows our passions, living space, and I’ve always felt strongly that artists should have this creating a linear practice that evolves from our own particular beliefs and opportunity. Look at Scandinavia, where artists are nurtured in this way. In interests. We have never been agenda driven or particularly interested in the UK, it’s a sink or swim situation, in which we’re seen as litmus testers being ‘hip’. Perhaps the Beaconsfield process is somewhat difficult to pin for developers, social scientists and lifestylers; to be discarded afterwards down. At once seemingly invasive and bordering on neglect, is this an like used blotting paper. After all, in society as a whole, we can’t all enter unpredictable concoction wherein the potential strength of Beaconsfield into the full swing of conventional life, with its levels of conformity and lies? A process very different from that offered by a conventional rules of engagement. It is good to have artists on the outside-in, rather than curator or institution along more established tracks. In certain situations the inside-out, isn’t it? Beaconsfield’s terms may represent a professional compromise and too risky a strategy, especially in a climate of defined and processed outcomes. The guideless pathways of Mansions existence were physically and When one set of artists tenders ideas to another set of artists, in order mentally hazardous. If you didn’t manage to carve something positive out to help them make work, a circular relationship based on generosity for yourself, then alcohol, blow, crack and smack lay in wait for you—no and creative dialogue can grow into a unique and practical method of matter how strong your resolve. So later on when I saw Dave hanging intellectual exchange. Which, in terms of lifting an artist’s practice to around the front of the Mansions I made excuses like—the van’s a another level can be liberating. bit full and the ferry would be too expensive. He told me to ‘fuck off to Hell Sinki’—in an almost affectionate way. For me also, my own collaborative practice as part of BAW is very significant in the development of my art, informing my decisions as a Diana Princess of Wales died whilst we were in Finland and that wasn’t a curator and facilitator. BAW allows me to step back and let people get on good omen—soon news filtered through that Dave had done one of his with their own ideas, but also to step in as an artist to support collaborators handstands on the parapet of Oval Mansions’ roof and just carried on over off-piste. BAW allows me space in which to be more perceptive and the edge, no panic, scream or shout, just pirouetted down in silence. He hit generous in my approach. Sometimes it’s hard to differentiate between the pavement hard—crunch, and never regained conciousness. When he our own artistic ideas and more general thoughts in Beaconsfield, and with finally died in hospital all his vital organs got recycled including his liver— those circulating around a work that we help to create. I believe that this which was a surprise. doesn’t matter—that as soon as you let authorship issues go, you are free to be whatever you want in diverse situations. I was advised early on by I stuffed all the oozing bodies from the show into the van for the return. an established curator—you know you can’t be both a curator and an artist at Needless to say they remained intact, and during that tumultuous the same time, you will have to choose one to be successful, in order that people know journey they gained a level of independence I suspect never experienced what you are. They may have been right then, but I didn’t listen as I didn’t since. Midway between Sweden and England, Pick-up cargo deep in the think it was relevant. And now in the age of connectivity, I seriously ponder what defines success any more.

182 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Raft 183 My artistic practice within BAW peppers our programme over the years, When we graduated from the Royal Academy Schools in 1990, with acting like a creative pressure valve. Conceptual templates were formed such wind of change in the air, the whole of the London landscape had and explored for future Beaconsfield projects. Sometimes they worked and potential in a way that now only exists in pockets of the city. I love London sometimes they didn’t. We made developmental experiments by combining because it is in the overlooked grimy areas that potential thrives, like ready different media, time frames and environments. Sharing these ideas, testing ingredients of a primordial soup. I believe that there will always exist a them out further—to see where, from our own perspective, they could neglected corner in this old city where artists will realise their potential. potentially go. We each bring our own preoccupations to a BAW work, and My dream lifecraft isn’t a yacht. My priorities are to survive at such a through collaboration create levels of refinement not achievable on one’s level that there is time to think and freedom to observe—so I suppose a own. Over a 20-year period works occurred, political in nature, conceptual cobbled-together raft will do me fine. and experimental. Mostly utilising sound as an important element. The BAW partnership remains peripatetic in nature, political, playful—and Our endeavours have been problematic at times: often ‘the powers that sometimes bordering on the downright outrageous (see R.A.F., p 80). be’ weren’t particularly interested in activities that were difficult to digest and not institutionally or commercially sanctioned. This was generally Each BAW work is a highlight for me, from A Public Work of Art to the most the case with Nosepaint’s and then Beaconsfield’s engagement with live recent collaboration with Bruce Gilbert, Diluvial—which through visual performance and sound work—in the context of Fine Art—from the media, field recordings and electronic sound composition, referenced early 1990s onwards. Now, in 2014, with multiple spaces existing for these preoccupations with rising sea levels. The sonic element was later released purposes, it’s easy to forget that this wasn’t always the case. as an album by Touch Music. In 1996 I fell out with the organisers of Life/Live—a survey of artist- Without something written down it often feels like nothing actually ever run spaces in Britain, at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. happened. Certain individuals rewrite ‘yesterday’ to fit what we vaguely Because of my stubbornness about our significance and being upset by remember or almost know today. Curators fill space with ideas of the their prejudice, they removed us, and nearly all reference to Nosepaint and past to fit the present. I actually enjoy history, new found excitement in Beaconsfield from the show. I apologise publicly to Naomi and Angus for what happened before, the passion and belief held by past artists, their my fallacious stand against what I perceived to be far too conventional a pioneering spirit. Many of our shows have reflected this interest—Shozo take on what it is to be an artist running a space. The majority of initiatives Shimamoto, Ian Hinchliffe— as well as attempts to work politically with in that show have vanished long ago, whilst Beaconsfield is one of the few artists we liked, such as John Latham, that didn’t happen because we could artist-run spaces still standing. not get funding to realise our ideas. In retrospect this is shocking—as John wanted to work with us when he was very much alive and kicking. Contemporary history is redrawn to play institutional catch up, loading I suspect that now he is dead and his work safely repackaged, it would be historical references to neglected practices into the database, as though much easier to secure funds! they were always there, just more radical.

During the opening of the Tanks at Tate Modern in July 2012 I got horribly Retrospective surveys of established and fringe activity married with drunk and lost my favourite jumper. I saw lots of artists and curators, documentation merely reinforces the notion that neglected activity has friends and associates—corporatisation is undeniably a good thing for always been in the fold when it generally hasn’t—there’s usually a big institutions such as the Tate because they have the money to open up art to difference between what really happened and these illustrations. In this a massive audience. In the limelight it’s easy to forget that not so long ago sense history is up for grabs in a problematic way—allowing a palatable corporatisation didn’t exist. But it is important that this success does not reconstruction of the present and of the past, a caricature of the growth of overshadow the artist, and other kinds of support necessary to maintain a our culture to be redrawn by self-interested parties. Maybe this has always healthy art ecology. Think of an iPhone factory in China pumping toxins been the case? into the Yangtze river that ends up killing all the fish. At the end of the day we all need an iPhone don’t we? And if the museum increasingly feels like a Some Beaconsfield commissions may have pre-empted and influenced shopping mall or airport departure lounge, does sheer volume of numbers certain artistic cultural modes and ideologies. Ground Control, 1997, define the depth of our culture? Aren’t we potentially lost as shopaholics 1 See Ground Control, Black Dog Publishing, exploited VoIP technologies for simultaneous cross-cultural dialogue. without a flight to catch or a destination to go to? 1997. VoIP in the form of Skype didn’t launch until 2003, and artist groups

184 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Raft 185 weren’t claiming this artistic ground until 2000.1 Foundations were laid Pages 188–189: Franko B, David Birkin, consumer democracy and information blow-outs. This doesn’t mean that for Speculative Realism with Syzygy, 1999—a project of mind-blowing Ansuman Biswas, John Burgess, Matthew there isn’t good art, great artists, decent curators, amazing museums, (spiritual and chemical) proportions. When visiting with his plastic Burrows, Tony Carter, Tamsyn Challenger, Jules excellent commercial galleries, revolutionary alternatives etc. And London shopping bag, Gustav Metzger accused me of having the sound turned up Clarke, Ben Cockett, Susan Collis, Michael is the frontrunner for all of these. But what if we have collectively taken particularly high because I wanted to make him deaf. Although I was not Corkrey, David Crawforth, Mikey Cuddihy, our eye off the ball and lost control? In the rich mix of gun dealers, fascists conscious of this at the time, on a higher level of abstraction, he could have Shane Cullen, Michael Curran, Judith Dean, of superficiality and criminals of finance? Of course we’ve always thrived been an Electro-Occult Hyperstition Entity that traffics between zones, Mark Dean, Nicholas Deshayes, Adam Dix, on low life, drinking the champagne of the aristocracy, but we never took and I may have been a repressed (repossessed) Demon basher. Richard Elliot, Robert Ellis, Tracey Emin, Laura them too seriously, and with hangover in hand the next day, we’d always Emsley, Alexa de Ferranti, Peter Fillingham, get on with normal life; and continue to make our art. When we started Beaconsfield we shared a desire to shift the status quo, to Edwina fitzPatrick, Rebecca Fortnum, Eloise challenge the ideas that circulated around the institutional, the commercial Fornieles, Stephen Fowler, Rachel Garfield, The concept of a Fourth Space run by artists for artists is even more and the ‘alternative’. We would take our own ideas and improve them by Mary George, Mathew Gibson, Bruce Gilbert, important today than ever before. Artists need a voice that isn’t merely taking the best aspects from all three in order to exist between the cracks. We Colin Glen, Lucy Gunning, Matt Hale, Carl fodder for the rich, amplified and devoured on the dinner party circuit. felt that as artists you could work in parallel, and break the cycle of jumping Michael von Hausswolff, Denise Hawrysio, History repeatedly tells us that the dominance of boudoir art does from one conventional log to another in order to survive. There could be a Damien Hirst, Rachel Howard, Marc Hulson, inevitably have its limitations. I’ve always believed that art can be like Fourth Space existing in its own right for artists, with enough capacity for Kate Janes, Sarah Jones, Simon Lawson, Peter science, exploring the unexplained, and that this endeavour has relevance them to thrive, that would offer a more substantial and stable raft. Liversidge, Sarah Lucas and Olivier Garbay, beyond our short tenancy. When future generations look back at history, it Maria Marshall, Ross McNicol, David Mollin, is very important to tell more of the story, to expand the picture beyond We might have been näive but we wanted to break the repetitive cycle of Charlotte Moth, Hayley Newman, Paul Noble, its margins to full bleed. If our detail is clearly visible then the general the art world, to attempt the creation of new space to exist in, as artists, Monika Oechsler, Peter Owen, Tom Ormond, information contained within will be adjusted. This will change the course having the freedom to make work that would be more significant in the Peter Owen, Lily Paine, Tom Paine, Tamsin of history as it happens rather than in retrospect, no matter however development of ideas: in society, politically, personally. What we didn’t know Pender, susan pui san lok, Monica Ross, Aura slightly—and this will be a good thing. was how the world would change. The ‘present’ is so heavily commercialised Satz, Boo Saville, Michael Shaw, Naomi Siderfin, and driven by such an insatiable desire for commodity, that art is quite hard Bob and Roberta Smith, Julian Stallabrass, Dafna David Crawforth to differentiate from other products within our culture. Mobile devices with Talmor, John Timberlake, Caroline Todd, Roman the cleverest techno trick seduce us with references from every genre—it Vasseur, Jessica Voorsanger, Mark Wallinger, becomes hard to differentiate between the new, the retrospective, the artifice Joseph Walsh, Roxy Walsh, Amelia Whitelaw, and the real; between what is news information and sales spin. Keith Wilson, Erika Winstone, exhibition view, Beaconsfield, London, SE11, Fraternise—the Communication technologies we could then only dream of using for art Salon, fundraising exhibition curated by Rachel (our reality, clunky Jesus-taped prototypes) are now sold in packages Howard, Judith Dean, David Crawforth and as virtual ‘lifestyle freedoms’; you can talk to anyone anywhere, find Naomi Siderfin,2011 out anything conceivable, watch and listen to the back catalogue of the world—all whilst devouring ourselves live in the flesh. And although we continuously speculate about the effect this grand-scale manipulation has on us: like smokers debating cancer, we are sold a vision of being liberated within this technology loop. And we will happily pay through the teeth for being so well connected. Technology opens the world up like a oyster—a voyeur’s paradise, filled with code. Yet art still has the power, like a foreign bit of matter stuck in the shell, and coated in nacre to ease irritation, to form something unique and beautiful.

It is undeniable that the arts have been part of a cultural revolution, where more people are engaged with art and artists’ ideas than ever before. The downside today is that if you own the biggest raft of all (or a yacht) and buy lots of art, that is considered more important in the art world than integrity. So this isn’t exactly an enlightened historical moment—of

186 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Raft 187 188 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Beaconsfield Chronic Epoch Photo credits

Pages 4–5 Renovation Photo Jon Byers Pages 138–139 Soundtrap IV Photos Angus Neill Pages 88–89 Earthshaker John Wynne Page 6 22 Newport Street, 2005 Photos Naomi Siderfin/Svein Flygari Photo Steve Ibbotson Photo courtesy Parabola Johannsen Page 143 The Way Out Pages 8–11 Nosepaint remembered Page 93 Fragmens sur les Institutions Photo Naomi Siderfin Photos Julian Stallabrass Républicaines IV Pages 144–149 Let’s Do Something or Pages 30–31 ‘The Lisson Gallery’ Photo Jon Byers “We Must Do Something” Photos Angus Neill Pages 94–97 Element p 145 Photo Naomi Siderfin Pages 32–33 A Public Work of Art Photos Naomi Siderfin/Svein Flygari Johannsen p 146–148 Photos Steve Ibbotson Photos Angus Neill Pages 98–99 Shozo Shimamoto Page 150 Terminal Late at Tate Pages 34–35 Plein Air Photos Jon Byers Photos David Chambers Photos Angus Neill Pages 100–103 The Agreement Pages152–153 TestBed 1 Pages 36–39 Cottage Industry p 100 Photo Nick Daly Photos Naomi Siderfin/Joseph Walsh Photos Angus Neill except Home and Away p 101 Photo Shane Cullen Page 154 Gaming in Waziristan Clare Palmier p 102 Photo Project Art Centre Photo Noor Beharam Page 40 Gargantua Pages 104–105 Voices from the Id Pages 155–157 Am I making up what Photos Angus Neill Photos Nick Daly really happened? Page 41 Robert Ellis Pages 106–107 Archangel of the Photos David Chambers Photos Angus Neill Seven Seas Page 158 Soundtrap V Pages 42–43 Disorders Photos Nick Daly Photo David Crawforth Photos Nic Percy/Julian Stallabrass Pages 108–109 We’re spending 4 Page 160 The Struggle Pages 44–45 RAX weeks at Beaconsfield so let’s hope Photo Joseph Walsh Photo Naranja everything goes ok Page 161 Fall Pages 46–53 Rude Mechanic Photos Alastair Hopwood Photo Naomi Siderfin Photos Nik Percy Pages 110–115 Engineer Page 162 Anniversary—an act of Pages 54–55 Thatched Photos the artists and various memory Photos courtesy FAT/Naomi Siderfin photographers Photos Bernard G Mills Pages 56–57 Ground Control Pages 116–117 Moral Plinth Page 165 Monoculture Photos Tomoko Takahashi Photos Rachel Taylor Photo David Chambers Pages 58–61 between the devil and the Pages 118–119 Lightsilver Page 166 Asymetrical Cinema deep (blue) sea Photos Jon Byers Photo David Chambers Photos Sakari Viika Pages 120–121 Economy 1, 2, 3 Page 167 Phase IV Pages 62–63 Tomoko Takahashi Photos Steve Ibbotson Photos David Chambers/Mary George/ Photo Julian Stallabrass Pages 123–127 Chronic Epoch Naomi Siderfin Pages 64–65 Instantaneous Photos Peter White Pages 168–169 The Unfun Fair / The Photos Jon Byers Pages 128–129 Greenwich Degree Zero Unfun Fair Too Pages 66–69 Glean Photos Steve Ibbotson Photo Joseph Walsh Photos Tomoko Takahashi Pages 130–131 Golden (Lessons) Page 170 Arkhipelagos Pages 70–74 Estate Photo Julian Stallabras Photo David Crawforth Photos Jon Byers Pages 132–134 Hibernator Page 171 We Are History Pages 76–79 Butterfly Photo Kristian Buus Photo David Crawforth Photos Edward Woodward Page 134 Soundtrap I and II Page 179 Art & Compromise V1 Pages 80–81 R.A.F. in Berlin Photos Steve Ibbotson Photo David Chambers Photos courtesy Freunde guter Musik Berlin e.V. Page 135 Forest Volume IV Page 180 Raft Page 83 Syzygy Photo Naomi Siderfin Photos Sakari Viika/Jon Byers Photo David Crawforth Page 137 Soundtrap III Pages 188–189 Fraternise Page 87 Field I­–VI Photo Naomi Siderfin Photo David Chambers

Right: Kim Noble, Fun Page, 2013

190 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH Copyright 2015 Black Dog Publishing Limited, London, UK, and the authors, artists and designers, all rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission of the publisher.

Designed by Amy Cooper-Wright and João Mota at Black Dog Publishing

Black Dog Publishing Limited 10a Acton Street, London WC1X 9NG United Kingdom

Tel: +44 (0)20 7713 5097 Fax: +44 (0)20 7713 8682 [email protected] www.blackdogonline.com

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data. A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 908966 57 5

Black Dog Publishing Limited, London, UK, is an environmentally responsible company. Beaconsfield: Chronic Epoch is printed on sustainably sourced paper.

This publication has been made possible by generous financial support from the Paul and Louise Cooke Endowment and the Henry Moore Foundation.

192 BEACONSFIELD CHRONIC EPOCH